


Beyond

by JCapasso



Series: Beyond [1]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:15:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 35,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25289668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JCapasso/pseuds/JCapasso
Summary: Elena refused to leave the other side without Damon and ends up getting trapped in the prison world with them. Since they're together, will anyone even want to leave though?
Relationships: Bonnie Bennett/Malachai "Kai" Parker, Elena Gilbert/Damon Salvatore
Series: Beyond [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1832122
Comments: 18
Kudos: 63





	1. Chapter 1

Damon sat on the hood of his car with a bottle in his hand, watching over the town that he was currently banned from. He was getting ready to take the biggest hail mary in the history of hail marys. It was funny. A few years ago he would never have thought of himself as a hero. Hell, he still didn’t think of himself as a hero, but here he was. About to heroically kill himself to save the town on the off chance he might make it back. It wasn’t just about saving the town though. It was about saving Stefan, and Enzo, Tyler, Ric. All those loses that kept piling up and this was a chance to get them all back and even if it cost his own miserable life, it would be worth it. 

When he got the text from Liz, he drained the last of the bottle. At least he wouldn’t be going through this sober. He got in the car and started it up, just for the door to open and Elena to jump in. “What the hell are you doing?” 

“You said to respect your choice. And I did. Now you can respect mine,” she said firmly. There was no way in hell that he was doing this without her. No matter how rocky their road, her place was by his side. Now and forever. If they died it would be together and if they came back that would be together too. 

“Whoa. No, no. That’s not how this works, Elena,” Damon shook his head. The whole point of him doing this was to save her as much as anyone. He wasn’t going to take her right into it. “The second we cross that border, you’re gonna feel /everything/. You’re gonna drown all over again. It’s gonna take you back to the night you died a human.” He couldn’t let her go through that. 

“I know what I signed up for, Damon. And I’m all in,” she told him, meaning far more than this trip. Far more than this one moment of sacrifice. She just hoped he realized that. Judging by the way he was looking at her, he got it though. That didn’t mean they had time for this whole conversation right now though. “What are you staring at? Drive,” she prodded. 

Damon gave her a smirk that said so much and she returned it, completely understanding every unspoken word. Every word that he couldn’t even begin to put voice too even if they had forever. God, but he loved her so much. As much as he wished he could protect her from this, having her here by his side meant everything. He gunned the engine and high-tailed it over the border as fast as he could. They only had one chance to get there before they actually died and who knew if they would even make it in time. When Elena started choking as her lungs filled up with water he cursed and hit the gas harder. “Come on…” he coaxed the car. Why couldn’t these stupid things go any faster?

“Damon, I…” Elena tried to say, but couldn’t. 

“I know,” Damon assured her. She loved him. Just as much as he loved her. He didn’t need to hear the words. He knew down to his bones. “I know,” he said again as he reached out and took her hand during the final push. They both clung to each other and closed their eyes as they careened straight for the building. 

The next thing Elena knew she wasn’t far from Bonnie and she ran up to her as Bonnie asked, “Did it work? Are you…”

“Yeah,” she nodded, adrenaline still rushing through her system. “Did Damon…” 

“Right here,” Damon said as he strolled up. 

“Okay, when you guys pass through me, you’re going to wake up with your bodies on the other side. I need you to get back here as soon as you can,” Bonnie told them, waiting until they both agreed before she grabbed them and sent them to the other side. 

Elena appeared next to her body and was caught off guard by the gruesome sight for a minute, until she was distracted by a familiar voice. “Did you seriously wear your seatbelt?” Ric asked amusedly. Leave it to Elena to be headed for an intentional fiery explosion and still wear a seatbelt. 

“Oh my god,” Elena sighed happily. “Alaric, what are you…”

“Come on,” he interrupted her. “You gotta go.” 

“But…wait…what about Damon? I need to find him,” Elena realized, looking around. He obviously hadn’t worn his seatbelt and was thrown from the car. 

“No, you need to go home to your brother. I’ll find Damon,” Ric promised. 

“I can’t,” she shook her head. 

“No, go on. Elena, get out of here,” Ric told her. 

“No,” she said firmly. She and Damon had come this far together. She wasn’t leaving without him now. Period. “No, you go. Jeremy needs you. I’ll find Damon and we’ll be right behind you.”

“Elena…”

“We don’t have time to argue, Ric,” Elena snapped. “I’m not going. Not without him.”

“Fine. Come on,” Ric said, realizing that she was right. He had a pretty good idea of where Damon ended up. He’d been watching the whole thing. They found Damon trying to lift a beam off the sheriff and rushed over to help. Ric helped him lift the beam and Elena shoved a box under it to hold it up, knowing that there wasn’t anything more they could do from this side. “Friendly advice,” Ric said with a smirk to Damon. “When you finally get the girl…don’t blow her up.”

Damon and Elena both laughed at that. “Good to see you too, buddy,” Damon said relieved. 

“Come on. We need to hurry,” Elena said. They could have the reunion once they were through all this. 

“She’s right,” Ric said clapping a hand on Damon’s shoulder. “Let’s go.” 

Damon nodded and rushed after them as they all ran towards the graveyard as fast as they could, which was pretty fast at vamp speeds. Ric was faster, being older than Elena and Damon was keeping back at Elena’s pace. Bonnie wasn’t wasting any more time. The second Ric was close enough, she reached out to grab him, pulling him back through. She knew she was cutting it close, but there Damon and Elena were. Damon pushed Elena forward first, like Bonnie wouldn’t have made the same choice, but when she grabbed Elena, nothing happened. “No…” she said sadly. “No, no, no.” She tried again, but still nothing. She even tried Damon, just to see, but that didn’t work either. She moved her consciousness back to the living world and rushed into the crypt only to find Liv gone. “No, Damnit!”

“Bonnie! Where are Damon and Elena?” Stefan asked fearfully. 

“I couldn’t get them. They were there, but the spell…”

“Then we’ll find them. We’ll start the spell again,” Stefan argued. 

“We can’t. That was our one shot,” Bonnie said sadly. 

“No,” Stefan shook his head in denial. “NO!” he yelled punching the wall. 

“I’m sorry. It’s too late,” Bonnie said before looking behind her. “They’re here if you want to say goodbye.” She walked out to leave them alone. 

“Damon? Elena?” Stefan asked, feeling like an idiot for talking to an empty room, but then he felt a hand on his shoulder that could only belong to his brother and a brush against his cheek that must have been Elena. “This isn’t the way it should be,” Stefan said brokenly. “It’s not supposed to be me back here. It should be you two. You shouldn’t have come after me, Damon.”

“You’re my little brother Stefan. How could I not?” Damon said. 

“And how the hell could you let Elena go with you?” he asked. 

“Like he could have stopped me,” Elena sniffled, leaning her forehead against Stefan’s. 

“At least if there’s one good thing, it’s that you’re together. I don’t know that either of you could survive without the other. I just wish I knew what was going to happen to you when the other side collapses. If you’ll stay together wherever you go…I’m so sorry. I love you both,” Stefan said with a sniffle as his tears started to fall. “You should be here too. I’m sorry.”

“I wish he could hear us,” Elena sighed sadly, leaning against Damon. 

“Me too,” Damon told her, pressing a kiss to her head as the ground shook again. “We need to get to Bonnie.”

Elena nodded and they both headed out. When they got to Bonnie, Elena grabbed both of their hands tightly. “Don’t let go. Whatever happens…wherever we go…we go together,” she said. 

“Together,” both Bonnie and Damon agreed, holding her as tightly as she was holding them. 

As the wind picked up and the shaking got worse, Damon asked, “This place is going down isn’t it?” 

She didn’t respond to the, quite franky rather stupid question and asked one of her own. “Do you think it’ll hurt?” Before anyone could answer, there was a bright flash of light and they knew no more.


	2. Chapter 2

Bonnie was the first to wake up and it seemed like they were in the same place they just left, other than the fact that it was daytime and seemed alive. Did they come back to life? That shouldn’t have been possible. Maybe they found peace? As she went to sit up, Damon and Elena started to groan too. “Where are we?” Elena was the first to ask as Damon helped her sit up. 

“I don’t know,” Bonnie said curiously. “It’s definitely not the other side though. At least I’m pretty sure it’s not.”

“It’s not,” Damon agreed. “I can hear birds and animals. And I can smell them.”

“Yeah the other side always smelled like a mix between a hospital and a morgue,” Elena chimed in. “Is this…peace?” she asked.

“I hope so?” Bonnie almost asked. 

“I doubt it,” Damon burst their bubble. “I would think that if this was peace, I wouldn’t be a vampire anymore, but I definitely still am.”

Elena sighed heavily. “Yeah, so am I. But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything though. We don’t know how things are supposed to work here.” 

“Maybe we should just go see what’s out there and see if we can’t figure it out,” Bonnie suggested, getting to her feet. 

“Okay. But my house first,” Damon told her. 

“Why?” 

“Because for one, it’s closest,” Damon told her. “And for two, it’s biggest. And for three…what I already said.” 

Elena snorted amusedly. “For three, at least there will be a vehicle there so we don’t have to walk all the way back to town either way.” 

“Yeah, that,” Damon chuckled, wrapping his arm around Elena and pulling her close as he kissed her head. 

“I guess I can’t argue with that,” Bonnie said with a shrug as she followed behind them. The walk was spent throwing out theories of where they were and how they got there. Once they were walking up to the house, Bonnie was the first to notice it. “Hey, there’s a newspaper.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Damon said confused. “We don’t get the newspaper.”

Elena looked over Bonnie’s shoulder and gasped when she saw the date. “But did you in nineteen ninety four?” she asked pointedly. 

“What?” Damon asked in shock. 

“May tenth, nineteen ninety four,” Bonnie read. “Could we have gone back in time?” she asked confused. 

“No. We didn’t,” Damon said, paling at the mention of the date. 

“Okay, can you just stop shooting down every single idea I have?” Bonnie snapped irritably. 

“I will when they’re good ideas,” Damon snapped back, really not in the mood for the attitude right now. 

“Guys, chill,” Elena said firmly before turning to Damon. “Why don’t you think we’re back in time?” 

“Because in ninety four this place was a fully operational bed and breakfast. There would be plenty of people here. Furthermore, on this particular date in ninety four, there was a big solar eclipse party going all day. This place would be packed,” Damon explained. 

“You seriously remember what was happening on a specific day over fifteen years ago?” Bonnie asked skeptically. 

“Let’s just say that this is one of those days I can never forget,” Damon sneered before storming into the house. 

When Bonnie started to go after him irritated at the way he brushed her off, Elena stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t,” she told her best friend. “Just leave him be.” She could tell that something about this day affected Damon deeply and an argument right now wouldn’t help anyone. 

“Fine,” Bonnie sighed. “You deal with him. I’m gonna go into town and see if I can find anything out.”

“I don’t know that any of us should be going anywhere alone right now,” Elena said nervously. 

“Relax. I won’t even get out of the car. I’ll just drive around and gather intel,” Bonnie promised. 

Elena nodded and let her go before heading inside to find Damon. She found him standing at the back of the lounge looking at one particular spot in the corner like he’d seen a ghost. She walked up behind him and put a hand on his back and when he jumped at the touch, her worry skyrocketed. For him not to have heard her come up meant that he was worse off than she though. “What is it, Damon?” she asked gently. Damon shook his head and turned away, going to pour a drink and Elena followed him. “Talk to me, Damon. Please?” 

Damon took a long drink and then a deep breath before he said anything. “You know that I have things in my past. Horrible things.” When she nodded and waited patiently to continue, he did. “Right back there, on this day, is when I crossed the line from horrible to unforgivable. I did the worst thing I’ve ever done. The one thing that I can never forget and never come back from.”

“What did you do?” she asked softly, running a comforting hand through his hair and leaning against his side. 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Damon told her. 

“But you need to,” she told him. “If we’re going to be stuck here, this is going to eat at you until you get it out.”

Damon took another shaky breath as he realized that she was right. He had just hoped to never have this conversation. The one that would really make her walk away. That make her see that he could never be redeemed. He plopped down on the couch after refilling his drink and whispered, “I killed a pregnant woman.” He put his head in his hands. “Worse than that…the baby she was carrying…was my blood. Zach’s daughter. My niece.” 

“Oh my god,” Elena breathed out, looking back towards the corner instinctively as her mind tried to conjure the images that she definitely didn’t want. 

“So now you know,” Damon sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose to stop the tears in his eyes from falling. “Now you know the truth about me. What I am…a monster.”

“Damon, no,” Elena shook her head. “Don’t do that.”

“What, you’re gonna start defending me again? For this?” Damon snapped. “Haven’t we already been down this road?” This was why they’d broken up to begin with. Because she shouldn’t have to try to defend every awful thing he’d ever done. 

“No, Damon. I’m not defending you,” she told him, reaching out a hand to run through his hair again, knowing how much that always comforted him. “There’s no defense for what you did. But you’re not that guy anymore,” she assured him. 

“You don’t know that,” Damon told her. 

“Yes. I do,” she told him. “And the fact that you feel such remorse for it that you have the date memorized, and even the spot where it happened, and it’s tearing you up so much even all these years later…that means something.” She leaned her head on his shoulder. “Monsters don’t feel remorse, Damon. They don’t care who they hurt. And they would never stop. You’re not a monster, Damon. And you never could be.” Damon tossed back the rest of his drink and reached out to pour another one, but Elena beat him to it and refilled his glass. “Now, you can take the rest of today and wallow in it. I’ll keep Bonnie occupied. And when we wake up tomorrow, we’ll face everything else okay?” she told him. 

He nodded slowly before turning to look at her for the first time since they’d gotten here. “Elena…” he trailed off before he finished though, unable to put anything into words, but hoping she would know what he was trying to say. 

Elena gave him a sad smile. “I know,” she said gently leaning her forehead against his before tilting her head forward for a soft kiss. “I love you, Damon. No matter what.” 

“I love you, too, Elena,” Damon breathed out, pressing one more kiss to her lips before she left him alone with his thoughts. How the hell did she always know what he needed even before he knew himself?

Elena stepped outside just as the solar eclipse reached it’s peak and she sat down on the steps to lose herself in her own thoughts as she waited for Bonnie. She’d meant everything she told Damon. The fact that he felt so deeply about what he’d done proved that he could never be a monster, but knowing about it still hit her hard. Harder than she’d let on. She wondered what had happened. What had led to it. She knew Damon well enough by now to know that there had to be something. He never lost it that badly without some kind of trigger. She also knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t even going to think about talking about it today. Maybe not ever. This didn’t change her feelings for him at all though. It couldn’t. She’d always known that he’d done horrible things in the past. Knowing what one of them was didn’t make a difference. In a way, knowing the ‘worst’ thing was almost a relief. It meant that there was nothing else coming that could hit her this hard. When Bonnie got back, Elena went to get in the car before she could get out of it. She was going to do her best to keep Bonnie away from the house for the rest of the day. Give Damon his space.


	3. Chapter 3

“What’d you find?” Elena asked Bonnie as she got in the car. 

“We’re going somewhere?” Bonnie asked instead. “What about Damon?”

“This is pretty much the worst day of Damon’s life, and no I’m not saying any more than that. I told him he could take the day to wallow and we’ll start figuring things out tomorrow,” Elena told her. “That doesn’t mean that we can’t do some scouting in the meantime.” 

Bonnie rolled her eyes but nodded. “Well what I found is really weird. There are no people anywhere, but it seems like there should be.”

“What do you mean?” Elena asked curiously as Bonnie drove them back towards town in one of the old cars she found. 

“I mean, there are cars in parking lots, lights are on, places are open, but there are no actual people anywhere. It’s like the whole world is frozen in time and everyone in it disappeared.”

“That /is/ weird,” Elena said worriedly. “Do me a favor and detour to the hospital?” 

Bonnie made the turn before asking, “Why?” 

“Because hopefully there is blood in the blood bank or we might just be in trouble,” Elena pointed out, reminding her that two of the people she was stuck here with were vampires. 

Bonnie paled slightly and started driving a little faster. It wasn’t like there was anyone on the road at least. She knew that Elena would never eat her, but Damon she wasn’t so sure about if he got hungry enough. And since he was stronger and faster than Elena, she might not be able to stop him. “What if there’s not?” she couldn’t help but ask. 

“Then we have to hope we can get out of here quickly or Damon and I will have to desiccate until you can find us all a way out,” Elena told her before noticing her fear. “Damon won’t kill you. No matter how hungry he gets. Even if I would let him which I wouldn’t.”

“He’s tried to kill me before,” Bonnie pointed out. Elena always had been more than a little blind where Damon was concerned. 

“Yeah, when he lost his temper and he regretted it immediately. Not because he was hungry. And that was a long time ago. He’s not nearly as hotheaded as he used to be,” Elena explained. 

“Says you,” Bonnie muttered as they pulled into the hospital. 

Elena declined to comment as she got out and headed inside, followed by Bonnie and both of them breathed a sigh of relief when they saw that the blood bank was fully stocked. “Help me load up some of this?” she asked as she started grabbing the Styrofoam coolers to fill with blood. 

“How much are we taking?” Bonnie asked as she saw how many coolers Elena was grabbing, even while she was packing the first one. 

“As much as we can fit in the downstairs fridge,” Elena told her. “There’s no point in taking more trips than we have to.” Bonnie nodded as they worked together to load them all up. In all it only ended up being a fraction of what was there. At least they wouldn’t have to worry about starving anytime soon. Once all the coolers were full they started taking them out to the car. Bonnie took one at a time while Elena could stack three before she had trouble seeing over top of them. 

Once they got back to the Salvatore house, Bonnie decided to wait in the car. “I’ll wait out here. Dealing with a moody Damon Salvatore isn’t my idea of fun and we might as well go pick up some human food too and maybe some clothes and stuff while we’re avoiding the place for the day.” 

“Okay. I’ll be back,” Elena told her, using her vampire speed to get everything unloaded and put away in the fridge. She also took the opportunity to check the kitchen to see what they might need. She took a bag of blood to Damon, who was now sitting in the corner where it happened, drinking directly from the bottle. “I thought you might be hungry,” she said gently, handing him the bag. 

“Thank you,” Damon said weakly as he took it. 

Elena leaned down and kissed his head as she ran her fingers through his hair. “Still want to be alone?” When he nodded, she brushed her hand down his cheek and left, heading back to Bonnie and the car. “So the kitchen is pretty stocked with the basics, at least, but there’s still plenty we can get there. I think clothes should be first though. I would assume all Damon’s old clothes are still there since he was living there in this time, but neither of us have anything but what’s on our backs.”

“That sounds like a plan. It’ll be just like a girl’s shopping trip,” Bonnie chuckled, trying to forget how eerie this entire thing was. 

It was dark by the time they got back, and Bonnie hesitated before going inside. “It’s fine. Just don’t go in the lounge tonight,” Elena told her when she saw her hesitation. “You can pick any of the guest rooms to sleep in.”

“Maybe I should just go home,” Bonnie suggested. 

“No, we really shouldn’t split up right now,” Elena argued. “At least not until we figure out what’s going on.”

Bonnie sighed and nodded. “You have a point,” she admitted. They got everything in and put away and Bonnie decided to go to bed. It had been a long day and she wasn’t entirely sure that they’d slept before they got there. For all she knew they’d been unconscious for only a few seconds which meant that they were running on almost two days without sleep. Elena soon realized the same thing and went to climb into Damon’s bed. 

When Damon came up two hours later, he stopped short at the sight of Elena in his bed. It had been more than six months since they broke up and while it was somewhat implied that they were back together, it hadn’t been stated outright. Either way though, it had been so long since she’d been in his bed and he had spent so long aching for it that he decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. At least for tonight he needed this desperately. Even if it was just for tonight. Tomorrow they would need to talk. 

He slid into bed, feeling all the tension from the day seeping from him as she instinctively rolled to his side, and he wrapped his arms around her and breathed in her scent as he slowly drifted off to sleep. When he woke up the next morning, she was already awake, and still holding him. “God, you have no idea how much I missed you,” she breathed out when she realized he was awake. 

“Probably about as much as I missed you,” Damon replied, running his hand over her back. “What is this, Elena?” he had to ask. 

“What do you mean?” she asked, propping herself up to look at him. 

“I mean…are we back together? What about all the problems we had? They don’t just go away because we want them to.”

“You’re right. They don’t. But they also don’t matter,” Elena told him. “So you’ve done bad things in the past. I get that and it’s not my place to judge you for your past. As far as the future…you’re going to make mistakes. So am I. We’ll fight about them as they come up, but we can’t just throw away a love like ours.”

“Even though you make me a psycho?” Damon asked almost amusedly and more than a little hopefully. 

“You’ve proven that you /can/ hold it together, Damon. And I /can/ not defend you. Which means anything that happens in the future is our choice. But the simple fact is that I love you, Damon. And I can’t live without you. You are my soulmate and my place is by your side. No matter what.” 

Damon smiled happily and pulled her into a long slow kiss that she returned gratefully. When it ended, Damon slid his hand into her hair, brushing it back as he looked into her eyes. “I love you so much, Elena.” 

Elena grinned and brushed her hand down his cheek. “There’s that face again.”

“What face?” he asked with a chuckle. 

“You’re happy.” 

“How could I not be when you’re with me?” Damon asked, pulling her in for another kiss that quickly turned to more. God how he’d missed this. There weren’t even words. As they were holding each other after and catching their breath, Damon ran his hand over her body and whispered, “Promise me this is forever?” echoing the words she’d used almost a year ago. 

“I promise,” she said with a smile, leaning in to kiss him again. “But we really should get up and see if we can’t make some headway on figuring out where we are and what’s going on.” 

Damon huffed and pouted. “If we must.” 

Elena chuckled and kissed the tip of his nose. “We must.”


	4. Chapter 4

After a quick shower together, Damon and Elena headed downstairs to find Bonnie already up and sitting at the table with a cup of coffee and the newspaper. “We’ve got a problem,” Bonnie told them as they came in. 

“Can I at least have some coffee first?” Damon asked with a sigh as he poured himself a cup and one for Elena too. 

“Sure. Go ahead. I already grabbed today’s paper so you can read that while you drink it,” Bonnie said tossing the paper to his seat as he sat down. 

Damon picked it up as he took a sip of his coffee and then dropped it back to the table, looking up at Bonnie with a dangerous look. “Is this a joke?”

“Nope. No joke. I just went out and grabbed it off the lawn about ten minutes ago,” Bonnie told him. 

“What’s going on?” Elena asked grabbing the paper herself and she gasped at the date. “But…we’re repeating the same day?” 

“Wonderful,” Damon groaned. “Like things couldn’t get any worse.”

“Please don’t say that,” Elena said desperately. “You know what happens when you say things like that.”

Bonnie couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “Elena’s right. Things could be a lot worse.” 

“Any ideas why we’re stuck repeating this day?” Elena asked. 

“Because we’re in my personal hell obviously,” Damon muttered. 

“Don’t be so pessimistic,” Elena chided gently. “Maybe we’re here so that you can learn to forgive yourself before we can find peace.”

“Oh great. My chance at peace is now tied to Damon Salvatore’s forgiveness,” Bonnie scoffed. 

“Bonnie!” Elena scolded. 

“No, she’s right,” Damon huffed. “If that’s the case, then you’re both screwed.” He got up from the table, leaving his half drunk coffee and walked outside. 

Elena sighed sadly and got up to follow him, finding him standing by the porch railing, leaning forward on it. She stepped up behind him and wrapped her arms around his middle, laying her cheek between his shoulder blades. She splayed one hand flat over his chest and the other on his stomach. She had no idea what to say so she just offered him silent comfort. Damon took a heavy breath as he covered her hands with his and leaned back slightly against her, soaking up all she was offering and still unable to believe that she was offering it in the first place. 

They stood like that for a long time before Damon turned in Elena’s arms and kissed her softly. He leaned his forehead against hers for a moment before taking her hand and pulling her back into the house. “Okay,” he said walking back into the kitchen and sitting down with his now cold coffee. “You’re not the anchor anymore which means you should have your magic back so why don’t you just witchy us out of here.”

“I’ve been trying to do magic all morning,” Bonnie said irritably. “I can’t.”

“Well you’re spectacularly useless,” Damon snapped. 

“Damon, enough,” Elena said firmly. “I think you’re being a little hasty here anyway.”

“What do you mean?” Bonnie asked.

“I mean that, bad memories aside, this place isn’t so bad. We have everything we need. We have each other. What if getting out of here ends up sending us someplace worse? Like a more literal hell?”

“Or it could send us someplace better,” Bonnie pointed out hopefully.

Damon sighed, realizing that Elena was right. “Do you really want to take that risk?” 

“Okay, do you seriously have to disagree with every damn thing I say? Even when I’m arguing for what you wanted in the first place?” Bonnie asked Damon incredulously. 

Elena pinched the bridge of her nose wearily. These two were going to drive her to drinking. “Can we please just have a single discussion without you two getting pissy every five minutes?” 

“I’m not gonna give up on getting my magic back,” Bonnie argued. 

“No one’s asking you to,” Damon pointed out. 

“Yeah, you should totally get your magic back if you can,” Elena agreed. “All I’m saying is that zapping us out of here willy nilly shouldn’t be the primary goal. We need to at least have some idea where we’re going before we do that.”

Bonnie sighed and nodded. “Yeah. That makes sense.” 

“In the meantime, how about we do some exploring. See what we can find in the house that will be useful,” Elena suggested. Giving them a project should help to keep tempers cool. At least mostly. They all agreed and then split up to explore, planning to meet back in the kitchen for lunch. 

Elena went to Stefan’s room first, looking for something in particular, smiling when she found his blank journals and grabbed one. She also found a polaroid camera along with a few pictures of Zach and the obviously pregnant girlfriend. Elena winced at the thought of what happened after these pictures were taken, but took a few minutes to look through them anyway before shoving them into the back of the bottom drawer of Stefan’s desk where Damon wouldn’t find them. She couldn’t bring herself to destroy them though. 

Damon went to his room first. He hadn’t taken the time to refresh his memory of what he had back in this time period. He’d never really been much for the whole tech craze so there wasn’t a lot of useful stuff there and his clothes were ridiculously out of date. God, he’d forgotten about his plaid phase. He cringed as he went through his books and remembered what his state of mind had been like then. The psychology books weren’t so bad, but the self-help books had to go. Preferably before Elena saw them. Unfortunately, he was still in the process of gathering them up to throw them away when Elena came in to drop off her new journal. 

“What’s that?” she asked curiously, coming over to read the books. 

“Nothing. Just trash,” Damon said quickly trying to turn away. 

“Oh come on,” she chuckled, grabbing one of the stack. “You Can Be Happy No Matter What,” she read the title as he snatched it away, so she grabbed another one. “Reclaiming and Healing Your Inner Child.” And a third. “Learned Optimism,” Damon grabbed them all from her and turned to throw them in the back of the closet. “Damon, what happened?” she couldn’t help but ask. He had obviously been trying to better himself, even if the idea of Damon reading self-help books blew her mind, but then he went on and did the unforgivable. She was more sure than ever that something major happened to set him off. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Damon said tightly. 

Elena took his hand and led him over to the bed. “Please talk to me, Damon. I know how hard it is for you to be here in this time. Let me be here for you.” 

“You don’t want to hear the whole pathetic story, Elena. Believe me,” Damon sighed. 

“Yes. I do. And I think it will help you to tell it,” she said gently. 

Damon fought with himself for a good while before he finally started to talk, letting her pull him down so that his head was lying in her lap as she ran her fingers through his hair. “I was still trying to recover from my humanity being off. I was doing the little I could to make amends for the horrible stuff I’d done, and after a while, I came home. I wanted some tether to my humanity. Something to hold on to. I wanted to reconnect to my family. Stefan treated me with nothing but suspicion and coldness from the moment I arrived, but I dealt with it. I deserved it.”

“No, you didn’t,” Elena told him. “It wasn’t like he’d never done terrible things when his humanity was off. He should have understood.” She would have. She’d only had hers off for a little while and hadn’t been through nearly as much as Damon had, but she still would have understood the need to reconnect after that. The need for support and acceptance. She’d definitely needed it. 

“Regardless, I worked hard to do things right. To be better. Stefan banned me from feeding in town, so I fed right here. In the house. I didn’t hurt anyone or kill anyone. I compelled them to forget and even got rid of the pain. I fed from their wrists to make it easier to not take too much. I was doing good. At least I thought so. The day of the eclipse, Stefan found out. The next thing I knew, he broke my neck, dumped me in a shed in the middle of the day, and stole my daylight ring.” 

“He what? But you weren’t hurting anyone. What was his problem?” Elena asked horrified. 

“He said that he had rules and I broke them. He was always so self-righteous. Thought his way was the only right way. He asked me why I bothered coming back if I wasn’t going to do things right. I told him how I just wanted to reconnect to my humanity. Find a tether. How much I was struggling. I even asked him to take off with me. Hit the road. Just be brothers again. That just set him off on how much of a monster I was. How I was a complete failure at being anything else. How even when I tried to be better my very existence destroyed everything I touched. He told me that he didn’t care because I didn’t deserve to be cared about. That I could never be worth anything. And then he walked away. Left me trapped in that little shed, cowering from the sun that slipped through the cracks.” 

“Oh god,” Elena gasped. No wonder he snapped. He’d already been on the edge and trying so hard to come back from it and then that…she would have snapped too. 

“It broke me, Elena,” Damon said sadly, her fingers carding through his hair comforting him more than he would admit. “It wasn’t long before the eclipse hit and the sun disappeared. It gave me a chance to get out of the shed and into the house. I slaughtered a dozen people without a thought and then took Gail hostage to force Stefan to give me my ring back before I killed her too. I didn’t even think about the baby. I didn’t think about any of them. All that mattered was the fact that I was never going to be anything but a monster so I might as well act like it.”

Elena wiped her tears from her cheeks before they could fall on Damon. “I get it, Damon,” she assured him. When he opened his mouth to argue, she cut him off. “I’m not defending what you did or making excuses, but that doesn’t mean I can’t understand. I may have only had my humanity off for a little while and I didn’t do nearly as much bad stuff as you did, but when I reached out for help afterwards, you were there. I don’t know what I would have done without you. There was no one there for you though. Worse than that, when you reached out for help, you got the exact opposite. I can’t say what I would have done in your position, but it probably would have been pretty bad too.” 

“It’s not like he didn’t say anything that wasn’t true,” Damon pointed out. 

“The hell he didn’t,” Elena snapped irritably. “You are not a monster, Damon. You are not a failure. You do deserve to be cared about. To be loved. /I/ love you, Damon. With everything I am and you are worth /everything/ to me.”

“And how many times have I destroyed you too,” Damon sighed. 

“Never,” Elena said firmly. “You have never destroyed me Damon. We’ve fought, sure. That’s just life. You’ve hurt me, and I’ve hurt you, but we always find our way back from it and we always will. Because you are worth it. No one and nothing is perfect, but even with the little bit of pain you bring me…you make me so happy that it doesn’t matter. You are everything I’ve ever wanted and every day with you is like a dream come true. You have such a big heart, Damon, and that’s why when it breaks things get bad. And that’s also why I always forgive you. Because you’re not evil. You just feel so much that you can’t contain it sometimes.”

“It doesn’t make it right.”

“No. It doesn’t,” she said. “But it makes it understandable. It makes it forgivable.”

“I don’t deserve forgiveness, Elena. Can’t you see that?” 

“No one deserves forgiveness, Damon,” she told him. “Forgiveness can’t be earned. It just is.” 

“Well it’s not something I’m capable of,” Damon said wearily as he sat up. 

“Yes you are, Damon. You’ve forgiven me for a lot. You’ve forgiven Stefan. You just need to learn to forgive yourself,” she said gently getting up and pulling him into a loving kiss. “Just like I forgive you.” 

“It’s almost lunchtime. We should head down and see what the witch found,” Damon avoided the subject. Elena just sighed and let him. She could tell that she was at least starting to get through to him.


	5. Chapter 5

When they got downstairs, Bonnie was already there waiting for them with a pot of water boiling on the stove. “I figured I’d make spaghetti for lunch,” she told them. “What did you guys find?” 

“Check this out,” Elena grinned pulling out the polaroid camera and snapping a picture of Bonnie. 

“That’s awesome,” Bonnie laughed, picking up the camera. Elena moved over to Damon and dragged him into a silly pose as Bonnie took a picture. It took a few more silly poses for Damon to pull out of his mood and laugh with them and then there were a few sweet pictures before Damon grabbed the camera from Bonnie and started snapping pictures of Bonnie and Elena. Then it was Elena’s turn to grab the camera and Damon and Bonnie both groaned. The first couple pictures she took were rather stilted and then Damon and Bonnie got into an argument which Elena snapped some pictures of too before the pot boiled over and Bonnie rushed to grab it. 

“What did you find?” Elena asked as Bonnie finished up the lunch and started dishing it out onto plates. 

“I found a computer…or what I think is a computer anyway. The thing is ancient,” Bonnie told her. “I got it turned on, but can’t figure out how to work it.”

“That makes sense. Windows was just getting started in this time and not many people used it,” Damon pointed out. 

“Do you know how to use whatever is on it?” Elena asked hopefully. 

“Not really. I’ve never been big on technology,” Damon shrugged. “I’m sure there’s a user manual or something around here and we can figure it out though. If nothing else, there has to be something at a bookstore or library that will help.” 

“I found an old video camera too, but haven’t done much with it yet,” Bonnie told them as they all sat down to eat. 

“Oooh, can I see it when we’re done?” Elena asked hopefully. Mostly she just wanted to steal whatever tape was in it to hide away with the pictures. At least until Damon was ready to face it. 

“Sure,” Bonnie shrugged. “What else did you find? Just the camera?” 

“I also found a new journal,” Elena shrugged. 

“And I found out how horrible my fashion sense was in this decade,” Damon chuckled, pulling laughs from both the girls and the rest of the short meal was spent picking on Damon for his fashion choices and him throwing out some digs about them being toddlers with fluffy dresses and ribbons in their hair.

“I’m gonna go try and connect to my magic for a while,” Bonnie said when they were done eating before she went to grab the video camera to hand to Elena. 

Damon noticed Elena pawn the tape from the camera and silently thanked her before she said, “I guess I’ll see if I can figure out the computer thing.” 

“I’ll clean up in here and then join you,” Damon told Elena, sending her off with a kiss. Most of the afternoon was spent fruitless on all their parts. Damon and Elena decided to go out the next day and find a book on using computers in this time since there wasn’t one there. Not that they could find anyway. It was Damon who had the idea for Bonnie to go to her house and try to find her grandmother’s spell books and see if they could help. 

Elena talked Damon into making a trip to his father’s grave to get Emily’s grimoire for Bonnie too, so the next day was planned for all of them. That night Elena was sitting at the desk writing in her journal while Damon laid in bed reading for a while. Until Damon got impatient anyway and came over. He pulled the pen out of her hand and slid the book over and wrote ‘but now I have to go because my dashing and irresistible boyfriend wants to take me to bed and spend the rest of the night ravishing me’. Elena laughed as he closed the book and she took his hand as he pulled her too him, kissing her deeply. She really liked the idea of having notes in his handwriting in her journal like that. As long as he didn’t get snoopy and read the whole thing. 

It was the next day when Damon started getting the feeling of being watched. Not all the time, but often enough. He put it out of his head though. There was no one else there and no sign of anyone else there. Eventually over the next few months, he didn’t even notice that feeling anymore as time moved on and they got more comfortable. Once or twice a week the three of them spent all day together. At least a few hours every other day, Bonnie spent alone trying to reconnect with her magic while Damon and Elena reconnected with each other. Bonnie moved her room to the other side of the house after the first few days though after hearing far more than she ever wanted to from Damon’s room. 

Bonnie wasn’t having any luck reaching her magic, but Damon and Elena did finally get the computer figured out. And immediately wiped the hard drive and cleaned off all the available disks to put the pictures and videos from the digital camera on. There wasn’t exactly a lot of space available for such things on the old dinosaur of a system. They even came up with a system for the spellbooks Bonnie found. The ones that were lost in the future. They just took pictures of the pages and put them on a separate disk that they would hopefully be able to take with them when they left. 

They had just gotten home from their weekly grocery trip when their comfortable routine was interrupted. By the doorbell of all things. They all looked at each other confused before Damon motioned for them to stay put and went to answer the door. 

Kai had taken a few deep breaths for calm before ringing the bell. He hadn’t spoken to another person in more than ten years and he was more than a little nervous. He had run out of the little bit of power he’d managed to siphon to keep himself cloaked though so it was now or never and the idea of going back home and continuing to live in solitude for the rest of eternity was even worse than this. When Damon opened the door, he plastered a grin on his face. “Hi, Damon. I’m Kai.”

“Who are you and how are you here?” Damon asked suspiciously. 

“Like I said, I’m Kai. I felt you arrive in this world a few months ago and I’ve been watching you…” 

Damon reached out and grabbed the front of his shirt. “You’ve been spying on us? For months?” 

Elena jumped in and put a hand on Damon’s arm to calm him. “You might want to explain just how you’ve been watching us and where.” She knew where Damon’s mind was jumping and if he was right, then she would help him beat the little twerp, but she wanted to hear him out first. 

“Not private things or anything. Not on purpose anyway. I don’t watch you in your rooms or in the shower or anything,” Kai said quickly. “And once I figured out what happens when Bonnie leaves the house I started following her those times instead of staying here.” 

“Wait, what happens when I leave the house?” Bonnie asked curiously. 

“It’s not important,” Elena said quickly before this Kai person could answer. 

“And you better choose your next words very carefully,” Damon warned. 

“I’m sorry. I’m just a little rusty on the whole face to face human interaction thing,” Kai said worriedly. He knew that his usual cocky attitude wouldn’t get him far here with these people so he was letting his real self shine through more, hoping for the sympathy vote. 

“Let him go, Damon,” Bonnie was the one to say. Kai looked scared and he had come here and rang the bell like a civilized person obviously hoping to talk, so the least they could do was act just as civilized. Whatever he’d seen in the public areas of the house on accident, there was no reason to treat him like a criminal for, even if it did creep her out that he’d been watching them for months. 

When Damon let go, Kai smoothed out his shirt and gave Bonnie a grateful smile. “Thank you, Bonnie.” 

Elena pulled Damon out of the doorway and motioned Kai in, careful not to say the words just in case he was a vampire, but he had apparently been in the house often anyway. When Kai walked in, Elena asked, “So do you have a last name Kai?” 

“Parker,” he told her, realizing his mistake when her eyes widened and she gasped. 

“Malachai Parker?” Elena asked in shock. 

“You know him?” Damon asked her suspiciously. 

“Yeah,” Elena said blurring into the kitchen and coming back with a newspaper article. “He’s supposedly missing after four of his brothers and sisters were massacred in their home.” 

“Yeah because that’s not suspicious at all,” Damon said turning to Kai for explanations.


	6. Chapter 6

Kai would have preferred a little more time to get them to like him before this whole thing came out, but at least he knew that Elena was a sucker for a good sob story and since she clearly ran things here, he would have a chance. Not that he was going to tell them anything untrue, but sharing the story in the first place wasn’t something that he was very comfortable with. Only the fact that it would be better than continuing his solitude and he knew that Elena at least would listen gave him the courage to do so. “Okay, look. I’ve done some things I’m not proud of…”

“Like slaughtering your family?” Bonnie asked incredulously. 

“You don’t know what it was like,” Kai said desperately. “To spend your entire life being treated like a worthless freak just because you weren’t born with your own magic…” 

“Your family were witches?” Elena asked as Bonnie was even more horrified that he killed witches. 

“More like a coven than a family, but yes. See I don’t have my own magic, but I can siphon it from other people, or objects, or even nature. They saw me as defective and made sure I knew it. My father took every opportunity to beat me half to death, sometimes for nothing at all. The entire family treated me like a waste of space. Told me all the time how worthless I was. How I should never have been born. They constantly used their magic against me whenever I couldn’t fight back. My twin sister was treated like a queen and they were all so sympathetic to her for being stuck with me as a twin.”

“So you just decided to kill them all?” Damon scoffed. 

“It wasn’t like that!” Kai exclaimed. “I panicked. When I found out that they were going to send me here instead of doing the merge, I would have done anything to stop it. To be isolated and alone for the rest of eternity…never to even lay eyes on another person. I was scared, okay? The only thing I could think of in that moment was to make sure that they had no choice but to keep me. If I was the only option for the merge then they couldn’t send me away. I would rather have died and had the chance to find peace than end up here.” 

“What’s this merge you keep mentioning?” Elena asked confused. It seemed rather important to the story.

“Whenever a set of twins turns twenty two in the coven, there is a merge ceremony. It’s a battle of wills and magic and whoever is stronger wins and consumes the other twin. Only a merged twin can lead the coven and since my father was the leader, whoever won the merge between my twin and I would have been the next leader.”

“Wait…so consuming your twin…you would have had to kill your own twin to lead the coven? And you were looking forward to this?” Bonnie asked horrified. 

“Not exactly killing them. The consumed twin lives on in the mind of the other. They take on some personality traits and gain their memories and such, but basically yes. It was the only bright spot in my life. The only thing I had to look forward to. A chance to prove that I was just as good as the rest of them. Or die trying. At that point it wouldn’t have mattered either way,” Kai explained. 

“To make you kill your own twin…” Elena shuddered at the thought. 

“It’s not like we have a choice. If a set of twins doesn’t go through the merge, they will die slowly and painfully over the course of the next months. That’s why they sent me here. My kind of magic was too unpredictable and they didn’t want to risk me winning the merge and ending up with a defective leader, but if I stayed in the same world as my sister we would both die. So I got sent away to a prison world.”

“Seems fitting if you killed your family though,” Damon quipped. 

“Weren’t you listening? That’s /why/ I killed them. They were already going to throw me away. I wanted to be the last. Josie and I. At least my siblings could find peace. What do I have here but endless torment? They stopped me though before I could get to the other twins. Josie protected them so they still have hope and I’m tossed out like the garbage. After almost twenty two years of enduring constant beatings and degradation, my only chance for anything better was snatched away. I’m not proud of what I did. I would take it back if I could. But I was just scared. I panicked. I snapped.” He let a few tears slip down his face. “I’m sorry. All I ever wanted was a chance.” 

Elena couldn’t help but feel bad for him as she took his arm and led him into the living room as Damon and Bonnie rolled their eyes. She was adopting another stray apparently. Damon didn’t care much about arguing though. He definitely recognized himself in that story and Elena had forgiven more than that from him, so it didn’t surprise him that she would let this one go too. Bonnie was a little more skeptical but tried to put herself in his shoes and couldn’t deny that she might have snapped too. She didn’t think she would have gone that far, but really you never know until you’re in the situation yourself. “You’ve been here since nineteen ninety four?” Elena asked him gently and he nodded. “So eighteen years you’ve been alone here.”

“Yeah. Until you came. Look, I’m sorry for spying on you and all. I just…it’s been so long since I’ve talked to anyone and…”

“You were nervous,” Bonnie finished with a sympathetic smile. Hearing Elena lay it out like that made her sympathy for him grow. 

“What I don’t get is why we’re supposed to believe that you’re not here just because you hurt your family,” Damon had to chime in. 

“You don’t really think they could manage to get all this together and pull off the creation of an entire prison world in just the one day since that happened do you?” Kai asked incredulously. “Heck, it took longer than a day for the key person in the spell to travel all the way to Oregon.”

“The key person?” Elena asked curiously. 

“There is only one line of witches with the ability to create prison worlds. Sheila Bennett had to travel from Virginia all the way to Oregon to anchor the spell.” 

“My family?” Bonnie’s eyes widened. That meant that it really was her Grams that sent them here when the other side collapsed. She had helped to create this world in the first place. 

Kai nodded. “Only Bennett blood and magic could create this world and only that can let me out. They told Sheila that they had to lock me away because I was a psychopath and a murderer, but I never hurt anyone until that day. She wouldn’t have helped otherwise though and when she got there and learned what I’d done she didn’t even bother to look deeper.” 

“Maybe that’s why she sent us here then,” Bonnie realized. “She figured out that she was wrong and used the collapse of the other side to get me here so I could fix her mistake.” 

“You think she sent us here?” Damon asked confused. Since when was that a theory. 

“I’ve been thinking about it more and more lately. She told me that she had an escape hatch for me when the other side collapsed. When it ended up being a time loop of some day that you apparently hate, I dismissed the idea, but it’s been nagging at me since we’ve been stuck here,” Bonnie told him. 

“And since she’s the one who created this world in the first place, you think she sent you here and we just got dragged along for the ride,” Elena nodded. “It makes sense.” 

“So you believe me?” Kai asked hopefully. 

“For now,” Damon agreed. “But I’m watching you.”

“Speaking of watching…how were you able to watch us so long without us knowing?” Bonnie had to ask. 

“Simple cloaking spell. I found a cursed object that I had been saving for when I really needed magic and siphoned it off when you arrived. The cloaking spell takes so little magic that it lasted for almost four months before I ran out,” Kai explained. 

“Wait…you were in Oregon…” Elena realized as her mind started working. 

“Yeah…” Kai said confused as everyone else looked at Elena expectantly too. 

“Which means that it’s not just this town. The whole world is out there. Just as it was in ninety four. With no one to prevent us from going anywhere or doing anything we want,” she said. 

A grin broke out across Damon’s face. “You’re brilliant, Elena. Why the hell are we staying here when we could be exploring the world in complete peace?” 

“Think of all the lost magical knowledge that we could rediscover,” Bonnie’s eyes brightened up. 

“We’re not gonna get out of here?” Kai asked worriedly. 

“I’m not sure how at the moment,” Bonnie shrugged. “And until I manage to get my magic back, it’s a moot point. Maybe something in all that old knowledge will be able to help me do that.”

“I had a couple ideas to help you get your magic back, but they wouldn’t have worked anyway,” Kai admitted with a sigh.

“What kind of ideas?” Bonnie asked hopefully. 

“Magic usually comes in times of desperation and distress. I considered attacking Damon and Elena and making you think I was going to kill them unless you could tap into your magic to save them.”

“If you even think about laying a hand on her…” Damon growled menacingly. 

“That’s why I didn’t. I’m nowhere near confident enough to take on both of you at once and you would both kill me in a second for hurting the other,” Kai shrugged. “I wouldn’t really have killed either of you though. I mean, it would kind of defeat the whole purpose of trying to escape my isolation if I killed the only possible company I have.” 

“Well you’re not alone anymore,” Elena told Kai. “You can hang with us until we get this figured out and then we can all go home.”


	7. Chapter 7

“We could always start with my family compound in the search for magical knowledge,” Kai suggested. “We have generations worth of accumulated knowledge.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Damon agreed. It would also give him a little more insight into Kai, too. “On the way we can stop by the homes of a few witches I know to grab what they have too.” 

“Like Bree in Atlanta?” Elena asked. 

“Yeah. And Gloria in Chicago. And Valerie in New Orleans. Witches grow on trees in New Orleans so we might want to plan to spend a lot of time there and gather up what we can.”

“It’s gonna take decades to go through all that,” Bonnie pointed out. 

“It’s not like we don’t have time,” Damon pointed out. “Besides, most of it we just need to skim for now to see if there’s anything that can help us get your power back. We can take pictures of the pages and put them on disks to take home for the rest. Elena and I can do that while you guys are searching since we don’t really know what to look for.” 

“You know, you’re smarter than you look sometimes,” Elena teased lovingly as she bumped him. 

“Yeah, well, I’m also going to insist on some fun trips too, so remember my helpfulness at those times,” Damon chuckled. 

“I’ve already done pretty much everything there is to do,” Kai sighed. “I even went to the white house and took pictures in the oval office.” 

“Ah, but have you been to the Eiffel Tower? The pyramids? The leaning tower of Pisa? The Mayan temples?” Damon asked with a smirk, guessing the answer was no. 

“And how was I supposed to get there? Swim?” Kai asked with a roll of his eyes. 

“We can grab a plane,” Damon said as though it should be obvious. “I’ll fly us around.”

“You can fly a plane?” Bonnie asked skeptically. 

“Not yet, but how hard can it be to figure out? I figure while we’re traveling around I can find some books on the subject,” Damon shrugged. 

“Yeah, no. I think you forget that we’re not all immortal,” Bonnie shook her head. 

“Actually…here we kinda are,” Kai pointed out. “I’ve tried to kill myself a hundred times. I just wake up when the day resets.” 

“Okay, so Damon can learn to fly, but I’m learning with him and we’re not going anywhere until /I’m/ convinced it’s safe,” Elena said firmly. “Immortal or not, I doubt it would be pleasant to go up in a fiery explosion.” 

“Again,” Damon joked, reminding her that was how they got in this mess in the first place. Blowing up the travelers.

“But for now…we have plenty of places to look in the US,” Bonnie pointed out, despite wanting desperately to hit the pyramids and the Mayan ruins and other places to see what kind of ancient lost magic she could find there that normal humans would have no idea what they were looking at. 

“That we do,” Kai said with a nod, glad to have people with him now at least. It wasn’t as good as going home, but it was much better than before. Without the means to scare the magic out of Bonnie, it would have to be good enough. “So…we leave tomorrow?” Kai suggested. 

“Works for me,” Elena shrugged as she looked around, getting agreements from everyone else. 

“We should grab something bigger to drive though if we’re going to be collecting all those libraries,” Bonnie suggested. 

“And I did hear of some testing being done on some kind of disk thing that can hold a lot more information if you don’t want to carry around so many,” Kai added. 

“Do you know where?” Damon asked, perking up. “Or any other information?” 

“I.B.M. headquarters in New York. It uses something called a USB drive. That’s about all I know,” Kai shrugged. 

“I’ll add New York to the list,” Elena said, already writing down the stops they had to make and trying to figure out the best order. “Do we want to save Oregon for last or does it matter?” 

“Doesn’t matter to me,” Kai said with a shrug. “But it might be better to finish up back on the east coast if we’re going to be flying overseas afterwards.” 

“Okay, so we’ll start with New York then,” Elena said plotting out the map. “Then move on to Chicago, and then Oregon and hit New Orleans on the way back and finish up in Atlanta.” 

“Before we go, do you know any magic heavy places around here that I might be able to siphon and get a little juice myself? At the very least we might need some translation spells,” Kai asked. 

“I’m not sure if the witch spirits would be here in the prison world, but the tomb spell should still be up,” Bonnie suggested. 

“Yeah, there aren’t any spirits here either. And I can’t siphon from spirits anyway. Only active magic. Living people and spells,” Kai told her. 

“Are we sure we want to mess with the tomb though?” Elena asked worriedly. 

“There’s no one else here,” Damon pointed out. “That means the vampires in the tomb aren’t there either.”

“Can you be sure of that?” Elena asked. 

“We’ll make sure before we do anything,” Bonnie promised. “But I’m with Damon. I don’t think they’re there.” 

“Well in the light of that small miracle, I think I’ll believe you both,” Elena laughed. 

“They do tend to bicker a lot don’t they,” Kai stage-whispered to Elena with a chuckle. Thankfully they didn’t actually ‘fight’ anymore. The heat had gone out of it quite a while ago and it was more like friendly bickering and less likely to result in murder. 

“That’s an understatement,” Elena stage whispered back. 

“We can hear you, you know,” Damon and Bonnie both said at the same time before looking at each other in shock and then mock-horror, sending them all into stiches of laughter. 

Once they recovered, Bonnie said, “Why don’t I go ahead and take Kai to the tomb since neither of you should be anywhere near there anyway in case we can’t get the spell down.”

“You’re not going anywhere with him alone,” Damon said firmly. “No offense, but it takes a little more than a sob story for me to trust you. Especially when you’re going to get powered up against someone who can’t use magic.” 

“I understand,” Kai nodded. Damon was always going to be the hard sell. He was more than a little protective and didn’t trust easily. 

“We’ll all go,” Elena said. “Damon and I will just have to be careful not to end up inside. And on the way back, we’ll stop by the hospital to stock up on blood bags for the trip.” 

“Don’t forget we need to find something bigger to drive,” Kai reminded them. 

“We’ll pick something up in New York. There are plenty of luxury RV dealerships and since it’s the first stop we won’t have long to be uncomfortable in my car,” Damon pointed out. Since he’d found it in the parking lot at the grocery store today, he wasn’t about to leave it behind. It would even be towed behind the RV. 

“See an RV. Why didn’t I think of that?” Kai smacked himself in the head. “I was thinking like an SUV or a van.” 

“Don’t feel bad,” Bonnie whispered. “So was I.”

“As Elena can attest…I don’t do anything small,” Damon smirked and Elena just rolled her eyes and smacked him. 

“Why don’t we grab some lunch before we head out,” Elena suggested. “I know Damon and I don’t need to eat, but you two do.”

“Sure,” Kai shrugged. “I’ll just have to try and forget what’s happened on that table,” he gave a theatrical shudder. 

“Oh god,” Bonnie realized what he meant by when she left the house. “On the table? Where we eat?!” She shook her head. “I think I’ll eat at the counter from now on.”

“That wouldn’t be any better,” Kai pointed out. 

“Oh for crying out loud!” Bonnie threw her hands up. “Is there anywhere in this house that’s sacred?” 

“Probably not,” Damon smirked, getting smacked by Elena again. 

After a quick lunch, they piled in Damon’s car and headed for the tomb. Kai immediately walked over to the door and put his hand on it. “Yeah, this will keep me powered up for a little while as long as I don’t use much.”

“Don’t do anything with it until we make sure the coast is clear,” Elena reminded him as she and Damon went over to move the door stone. 

Bonnie went inside and walked all through the tomb before coming back out. “It’s empty,” she told them, turning to Kai. “Do your thing.”

Kai put his hand on the wall again and they could all see a slight glow as the power flowed from the spell into him for a good long while before he took a deep breath, feeling the magic flow through him. “That feels so much better,” he sighed with relief. Having seven brothers and sisters plus parents who had magic and living in the middle of the coven lands, he’d always had plenty of magic growing up, even if it wasn’t his own. He was always more comfortable when he had magic in him. That was the hardest part of being here. 

Their next stop was the hospital blood bank where they fit as much as they could manage in the trunk before heading home. One good thing about the time loop was that nothing ever went bad. Even when the blood wasn’t refrigerated the freshness reset at the start of a new day. Once they got back, they set Kai up in one of the guest rooms and crashed early so they could get on the road at the crack of dawn.


	8. Chapter 8

The next morning, since the trunk was packed with blood, all their bags were packed in the laps and floorboards and it was more than a little cramped. Thankfully with Damon’s driving and the fact that the roads were empty, they were in New York in less than two hours where they split up. Damon and Bonnie went to find an RV while Elena and Kai went to steal the prototype thumb drives. Elena suggested that a vampire might be needed depending on what kind of unmanned security was around the IBM facility, but Damon wasn’t about to let anyone else pick out the RV. He didn’t want to end up with anything less than the best. Damon dropped Elena and Kai off at the building before driving himself and Bonnie to the RV lot. 

Elena and Kai learned that getting into the building was cake. It got a lot more difficult from there though. IBM was serious about their security. Kai had to use more than a little magic to fry electronic sensors and the alarms blaring were beyond distracting, but since there was no one to come stop them anyway they just ignored them. Elena had to break down more than a few cages around places that the alarms triggered though. In the end, only a witch and a vampire could have made it through and they started looking through the technology looking for things that were useful. 

At one point, Elena tripped an alarm that neither of them noticed and she didn’t notice the cage coming down that would have crushed her either until Kai tackled her out of the way. It took them both a minute to let the adrenaline pass over what almost happened before they sat up. Elena thanked Kai profusely for saving her life before they got back to their searching. A little more carefully this time. 

They passed over everything that was in the early phases of testing. It would be too glitchy and they needed things that were reliable. Elena was ecstatic to find an early model of a sixteen GB hard drive. She hadn’t realized those were possible in this era. It seemed like it was in the last phases of testing though, despite being a few years away from market so she grabbed a dozen of those. She doubted they would need that many just for pictures and the occasional video, but better to have too many than too few. 

Kai was the first to find the thumb drives. They only held half a gig each, but it was better than nothing and since all this was new at the time, Elena would feel much better with backups of everything, and they should be able to fit at least a few books on each thumb drive and a lot more on the hard drives. They ended up taking all of the thumb drives they could find which ended up being more than two thousand. They fit them all in a large box that was light enough for Kai to carry while Elena carried all the hard drives along with the best complete computer she could find out to the curb just as a huge RV pulled up with Damon’s car being towed behind it. 

Once everything was loaded, Bonnie handed Kai a sandwich which he took gratefully. Most of the blood along with all but a handful of the computer equipment was in the undercarriage storage. While Damon drove for Chicago at the fastest speeds the RV could go, Elena worked on transferring what they already had from the floppy disks to the flash drives and labeling them as she went. She started with the personal pictures, taking a minute to snap a few of Kai when he wasn’t looking to add to them. It was only fair that he be included too if he was going to be with them. She wanted to get the hang of the process before she started on the more important stuff which, at the moment, just included the Bennett family grimoires. 

While Elena was working on the computer stuff, Bonnie and Kai were getting everything put away once the sleeping arrangements were worked out. Damon and Elena would have the large over cab, drop down bed that had curtains surrounding it while Bonnie would have the only actual bedroom and Kai would take the pull out sofa. They would only be really living here while they were on the road though, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be as comfortable as possible. 

It was after dark by the time they got to Chicago and they decided to stop for the night. Damon parked the RV in the parking lot of a hotel where they went in and found nice rooms to stay in. Mostly so that Damon could have Elena screaming his name without disturbing the other occupants of the RV. They waited until the next morning to hit Gloria’s stash which was just loaded into the RV in less than an hour before they were on the road again headed for Oregon. 

Even Damon’s driving couldn’t make that trip in less than twenty hours which gave them all plenty of time to take pictures of all the pages in Gloria’s library. They had picked up a few extra digital cameras along the way so they could cut down on the work. Once the first few books were done, Elena switched to putting everything onto the drives while Kai and Bonnie continued going through the books. Anything that might be useful for their current predicament was set aside to go through later. Kai had even found a few cursed and spelled objects to siphon while they were there to make up for some of what he’d had to use in New York. 

Since Elena had told Damon about Kai saving her life, he had relaxed a bit around the witch and was willing to extend him a modicum of trust. They all knew that was the best he would get from Damon for a while though. Damon didn’t trust easily. He wasn’t watching him like a hawk anymore though at least, which was a bonus. By the time they made it to Oregon, all the books were cataloged and put onto thumb drives…even the darker stuff that creeped them all out. Knowledge was knowledge and there was no telling when something like that might be necessary in a life or death situation. 

Damon had declined to stop and rest and drove the entire twenty hours straight through, so by the time he stopped, everyone else was already passed out. He didn’t bother waking them up and just went to crash on the other couch opposite Kai. He didn’t even bother to pull out the bed part. Elena was currently sharing Bonnie’s bed, so for the first time since they ended up in this world, Damon slept alone. He was too tired to care though. 

The next morning, they had a quick breakfast of blood for the vampires and cereal for the humans. Given the lack of storage space available, Damon and Elena were forgoing human food since they didn’t really need it anyway. They had mostly just eaten to be polite to Bonnie and not leave her to eat alone and now she had Kai to eat with. Once they were done eating, Kai directed them to the Gemini compound which was currently fully visible. Siphoning that spell was one of the first things he had done when he got here. Along with everything else siphonable in a fifty-mile radius, so he was glad that he’d gotten that extra boost in Chicago. 

Kai refused to go into the house but told them were to find the library and even the trick to get into the secret part. Even Damon didn’t make a snarky comment about him not doing any of the work, knowing what that house meant to him. It was where he’d spent his entire life being abused before he’d snapped and killed half of his family. No one was going to ask him to face those kinds of memories. Instead, they boxed up the books and brought them out while he loaded them up into the RV. Damon was the one best able to stomach the imagination of what had happened in the house so he was the one that went through all the other rooms to get any stray books laying around and within a few hours the entire Gemini library was emptied. At least at this location. Kai knew of a storehouse for the more ancient and rare books that they hit next. This one Kai did help with but only had three boxes worth of books. 

From there they headed for a hotel and commandeered a large conference room to go through everything. Elena brought in the computer and all four of them started photographing for a while before Elena switched to archiving again. This was a much bigger job and took a month for them to finish. At least part of that was because Damon insisted on setting limits to how long they worked and taking days off to have fun. He even had a bad habit of dragging random people out for spontaneous fun, even just a few hours at the bar, usually with Kai which was their time to get to know each other better.


	9. Chapter 9

By the time they left Portland, Damon and Kai could be considered solid friends as could they all with Kai, but Damon was the most surprising one. He could see a lot of himself in Kai though. Difficult family, dark past, just trying to be better and afraid it would never be enough. He ended up taking the young siphon witch under his wing in a way that surprised both Elena and Bonnie. Bonnie more so than Elena of course. 

They didn’t take all the books on the road with them. They left behind anything that wasn’t immediately useful since they had digital copies of everything else. They only ended up keeping one book from Gloria’s that wasn’t dark enough to freak them all out, and about twenty from the four hundred book Gemini library that might come in useful for helping Bonnie to unlock her magic. When Bonnie got discouraged and started doubting if her magic was even still there, Kai proved it was by siphoning from her. Not a lot, of course. Just enough for her to feel it flowing. 

The trip to New Orleans was almost thirty hours of driving time, so it was split into two. Damon was the only driver. He actually enjoyed driving and no one else was comfortable driving something so large. They stopped at the four corners and took a day off to do a little sightseeing before they were back on the road. 

As organized as Portland had been was how chaotic New Orleans was. Kai was able to track large concentrations of magic which led them to the right places to look, but there was so much and it was all so jumbled up that it was hard to make real sense of anything from an organizational standpoint. Eventually they just decided to organize it by the location it was found. That stop also had Kai using his translation spells since a good number of the books were in French. Thankfully, the spell he used changed the words on the page completely which meant the photos could see the English words. The only thing the translation spell didn’t work on was the actual spells since they were language specific. 

They also learned during that time that Damon was fluent in French. Further questioning revealed that he was also fluent in Latin, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Russian, and Norwegian. They were all impressed, but none more so than Elena. Elena had always known that her boyfriend was smarter than he let on, but eight languages, even with over a century and a half to learn them, was still impressive. His French skills were a godsend this trip though. Particularly with the pronunciation. Kai only knew Latin and Greek along with English since they were the languages that the Gemini used for spells so all the kids learned them growing up. 

They ended up spending almost six months in New Orleans, between the treasure trove of magical knowledge and the fact that Damon insisted on showing them all his favorite places in the city, most of which were bars, they had a lot of fun. They hung out in all different configurations, but naturally Damon and Elena spent the most time together which meant that Kai and Bonnie were getting closer as a result before they moved on to their last stop in the US. It was a short drive and an even shorter stop since Bree didn’t have much. 

Damon had spent most of his down time while they’d been travelling reading up on piloting and he thought he had a pretty good handle on it. He skipped over the things that he wouldn’t need to know since there wouldn’t be any other planes in the sky or air traffic control to contend with and just focused on the important parts. Elena spent days quizzing him before she would even consider letting him fly them anywhere so they went looking for a plane. Starting with the private jets. They all wanted more room to move around and if they could take their RV with them that would be perfect. 

It took a few more days to find a suitable plane. There was plenty of room to drive the RV, even with Damon’s car attached, into the cargo hold and the passenger area was plenty spacious with just a few couches, a dining table/work area, a kitchenette, and a full entertainment system. They had decided to stop in London first and check out Stonehenge. Bonnie was getting more and more interested in ancient magic and hoped that there were some secrets there that hadn’t been unearthed yet. Maybe the type that required a witch to figure out.

They didn’t end up staying there for long, but there was something. A revealing spell from Kai who was starting to run low on magic showed carvings all over the stones that were photographed and catalogued, but a translation spell didn’t do anything. Kai pointed out that pictographs were one of the weaknesses of the translation spells, which didn’t bode well for their forays into the ancient Egyptians either. They would have to do that part the hard way. Unless they found a better translation spell of course, which wasn’t out of the question and Elena was already going through the files to see what she could find. 

Once they had mined all the information they could from the monument, Kai knelt down to siphon the magic from the area. There was so much that it would easily keep him going for years even without him rationing like he had been. They wanted to learn as much as they could first just in case siphoning the magic did any damage. When they left, the stone circle was still standing and they were back on the plane headed for Paris. Damon insisted on at least one pleasure trip in between the educational ones. They would spend a few months touring France doing nothing but having fun. 

Their first stop was ‘shopping’ if it could be called that since there was no way or reason to pay for anything. Damon insisted that if they were going to do this, they would do it right. The girls were sent off for evening gowns while he dragged Kai off to find tuxes. They were going to celebrate the end of their first year in this world by dancing the night away in the ballroom of the Eiffel Tower and Kai was suddenly glad for the dance lessons that his parents had gotten all of the kids growing up and he just hoped that he wasn’t too rusty. Especially since he was probably going to end up spending most of the night dancing with Bonnie who he was seriously starting to fall for. Maybe tonight would be a good time to make his move.

It took a lot less time for Damon and Kai to find something and get dressed, going with the simple black and white rather than color coordinating, than it did for the girls so Damon grabbed them a bottle of whiskey as they sat on a bench at the meeting point across the square from the tower and they drank and talked while they waited. “It’s funny. I never thought I would miss those ritzy events like this back home, but I actually kinda do,” Damon admitted. 

“I’ve never been to one, but I know what you mean. There are a lot of things I never thought I would miss that I do now,” Kai said sadly. 

“You do realize that part of the reason I organized tonight was to give you your shot right?” Damon asked, trying to make things clear. 

“My shot?” Kai asked nervously. 

“With Bon-bon,” Damon smirked. “And if you make all this trouble go to waste, I might have to hurt you.” 

“You know?” Kai asked with wide-eyes and Damon nodded. “Does she?” 

“Elena does. She noticed it before I did. I don’t think Bonnie does though. Not as far as she’s told Elena anyway and you know those two tell each other everything,” Damon assured him with a chuckle. 

“What if she thinks I only want her because she’s the only option and it’s convenient?” Kai asked his biggest worry. Well the biggest one other than being shot down cold anyway. He refused to admit that he’d never had a girlfriend before. He’d always been kept isolated because of his disability before he ended up here. 

“She probably will,” Damon shrugged unconcernedly. “But that’ll just be her insecurity talking. Elena and I can both see that it’s more than that and so will she eventually. It might just take a bit of convincing is all.” 

“You’re sure?” 

“Obviously I can’t be a hundred percent, but I’m at least ninety percent sure,” Damon told him before tapping a finger to his lips and changing the subject. “This is my first time in Paris. My first time outside of the states even.” 

“Mine too,” Kai said picking up the change in subject and assuming that his vampire hearing picked up on the girls coming. “Well, almost. I took a few trips up to Canada once I got stuck here, but nothing interesting like this.”


	10. Chapter 10

When Damon heard them getting close, he got up, Kai following suit, and turned around to face them and his breath hitched as he got a good look at Elena in a strapless dark blue trumpet style dress with a form-fitting bodice lined with sapphires. Bonnie looked just as amazing in a bright red one-shoulder mermaid style dress and Damon had to elbow Kai to remind him to breathe. They had both gone all out with the jewelry and their hair too and they both looked to die for. 

Damon pulled out the camera and took a few pictures of them before he handed it to Kai to get some pictures of himself and Elena and then took some of Kai and Bonnie ‘just for fun’. Once that was finished, Damon offered his arm to Elena, noticing Kai do the same for Bonnie and they headed for the tower. Damon promised them a trip up the stairs another time before they left the city, but not in their full eveningwear. They took the elevator to the top and then split up. Kai went to find the sound system while Damon set up a video camera in the corner. They wanted to record this night for posterity. And if he could happen to catch Bonnie and Kai’s first kiss all the better. 

The camera was ready about the time the music started, and Damon headed over to Elena and put one white gloved hand behind his back, giving a slight bow as he offered her the other. She grinned and curtsied as she took his hand and he immediately sent her into a spin towards the dance floor that he followed and took her expertly in his arms without missing a step to the music. “This is amazing, Damon. Thank you,” Elena said happily, settling comfortably in his arms. 

“Seeing you look so stunning and happy is all the thanks I’ll ever need, my love,” Damon said happily. Just the fact that they’d gone an entire year without breaking up again was enough of a miracle for him. Not that they hadn’t fought of course. They had just been more minor fights. Though not having any life or death situations probably helped that too. It was amazing the good that lack of stress could do. Their relationship was more solid than ever. 

“You look pretty incredible yourself,” she told him with a bright smile as she was led into a complicated spin that she only kept up with due to having so much experience dancing with Damon. They often took every opportunity to dance together. This one was special though. Sunset on the Eiffel tower alone was enough to do that, but it was sort of their anniversary and they were all dressed up…this night couldn’t be any more perfect. 

It was halfway through the song when Kai managed to get up the nerve to ask Bonnie, “Would you like to dance?” 

Bonnie smiled brightly at him and put her hand in his. “Sure.” 

“I’m probably a little rusty, so…sorry,” Kai said nervously as he led her to the dance floor. 

“It’s fine,” Bonnie assured him as they started to dance. She could immediately tell that he wasn’t nearly as graceful as Damon, but that was to be expected. Not only did Damon have about a century and a half of experience on any of them, but Kai had been secluded for almost twenty years without any opportunities to dance with anyone. He still wasn’t bad though. 

It was about halfway through the second song when she found herself drifting closer to him until they were cheek to cheek and her heart started to beat out of her chest. She had been falling for Kai for a while now, but how could she ever be sure that it was real and not brought on by circumstance? Then again, even if it was brought on by circumstance, did it really matter? At least for now, anyway. It didn’t seem like they were going to be heading home anytime soon. 

She lost herself in those thoughts as they continued to dance, not even noticing the sly glances that Damon and Elena kept casting their way as they danced circles around them, just having fun. She had no idea how long it was before they had their first stumble and they both laughed before their eyes met and she got lost in his dark blue eyes. All that trying to figure out if she even wanted him to kiss her boiled down to this one moment and as he leaned in, she realized just how badly she wanted it. 

The moment Kai’s lips met hers he knew that this was it. This was the rest of his life, no matter where they lived it and when she kissed him back, he felt like he might float away from happiness. It was something he’d never felt before in his life. The time he’d been with his new friends and dare he say family, he had found contentment, but this moment was nothing short of pure happiness and he never wanted it to end. 

Bonnie hadn’t realized how deep she had fallen for Kai until just now and she knew that losing him would kill her. There was nothing left to do but pray that when and if they made it back to the real world this would last. Neither of them noticed that they had stopped dancing and were just standing in the middle of the dance floor as they got lost in each other. Kai’s hand around her waist pulled her closer while his other hand moved to her cheek. Her hand on his shoulder slid into his hair as he deepened the kiss. Neither of them noticed the pictures that Damon and Elena stopped to snap before returning to their own dance. They may be in full view of the video camera, but they wanted some stills too. 

When the kiss finally ended, Kai pulled back and looked at her with a nervous smile. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a while now,” he admitted as his heart tried to beat it’s way from his chest. 

“I’m glad you did,” Bonnie breathed out. Their first kiss was at sunset on the freaking Eiffel tower, dancing in all their finery. It didn’t get any better than that. Hopefully, it would be the first of many kisses. Almost as if he read her mind, he leaned in for another soft kiss, this one much shorter but no less heartfelt before they returned to dancing. 

This time they started out cheek to cheek and Bonnie’s hand played with the hair at the nape of Kai’s neck as she just enjoyed being in his arms. It wasn’t much longer before they both needed a break though. They didn’t have the same endurance as the vampires after all, so they found a table to sit, and she beamed when Kai didn’t let go of her hand as they did.

Damon and Elena gave them a little while to rest before they went over and switched partners. Partially to gather information…Damon refused to call it gossip…but also because they all wanted to have fun together too. They only switched for a few songs before they switched back and did the same an hour later. After about three hours of dancing, even the vampires were getting tired so they called it a night and walked back to the hotel they had commandeered a few blocks away. 

When Damon noticed Kai saying goodnight to Bonnie at her door with a long sweet kiss, he gave Elena a look and they split up. Damon grabbed Kai and detoured him to the hotel bar while Elena went to chat with Bonnie for some girl time. “So, you and Kai huh?” Elena asked with a grin as she sat down on Bonnie’s bed with her. 

Bonnie gave her a goofy grin. “How long have you known? That I had a thing for him I mean.” 

“A couple months now,” Elena shrugged amusedly. “Not as long as he’s had a thing for you.” 

“He’s had a thing for me because I’m the only option he’s had in almost twenty years,” Bonnie pointed out with a huff.

“You don’t really believe that do you?” Elena asked incredulously. This had been part of the reason she wanted to do this. 

“Of course, I do. Don’t you?” 

“Not a chance,” Elena chuckled. “He looks at you the way Damon looks at me, Bonnie. He loves you. Just watch him. You’ll see.” She suddenly had a thought and pulled out her camera. “Here, just look.” She started scrolling through the pictures of the night including the ones of them kissing. 

“I don’t know,” Bonnie bit her lip. She wanted to believe, but she was also afraid to, so she decided to change the subject. “One thing I do know is that I’m totally taking this dress back with me if we ever get home.”

“You and me both,” Elena laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt as much like a princess as I did tonight.” 

“Well you look the part. All you’re missing is a tiara,” Bonnie said amusedly. 

“Next time we should both wear tiaras,” Elena grinned.


	11. Chapter 11

Damon sat a still slightly dazed Kai at the bar and poured them both a drink. “So you got the girl huh?” he said amusedly. 

“Yeah. I guess. I think. I hope…” 

Damon laughed and shook his head. “You should have stopped while you were ahead.” He didn’t miss how every word out of his mouth got worse and worse. “Trust me, brother. You got the girl…Now just don’t blow her up.”

“Don’t…what?” Kai asked completely confused. 

Damon chuckled and clapped him on the shoulder. “It’s a joke. You remember Ric I told you about? Well he died before Elena and I got together and when I met him on the other side right after Elena and I blew ourselves up to take out the travelers he gave me a little ‘tip’ and said when you finally get the girl, don’t blow her up.” 

Kai laughed loudly and took a sip of his drink. “I’ll definitely try not to follow your lead in that one then.” 

“Sometimes, my friend, it’s a matter of do as I say not as I do,” Damon joked. 

“Somehow not blowing up the woman I love isn’t actually a lesson I needed,” Kai chuckled. “Guess that makes me one up on you.” 

“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up,” Damon chuckled along with him. “I still wouldn’t take that moment back for anything though.”

“Because she ended up here with you?” Kai asked. 

“No. Though that does help. I would go insane without her here. The real reason though is because of how it happened. I was going to go myself, but then she jumped in the car and refused to get out. She wouldn’t leave my side, no matter what. /That/ is the kind of love we should all aspire to,” Damon said with a grin. 

“I can see that,” Kai nodded. “But I’ve known since I first saw you two that I wanted a love like yours. And I think I’ve found it. At least for my side.”

“For hers too,” Damon smirked. “I’ve seen the way she looks at you. You’ve got it in the bag. As long as you don’t screw it up.” 

“I’ll do my best,” Kai promised. “And if you see me about to…”

“I’ll knock some sense into you. Though it’s more likely to be Elena knocking sense into both of us,” Damon admitted amusedly. 

“You might be right there,” Kai laughed as he reached out to refill both their drinks. It wasn’t long before they were both headed for their rooms though. It had been late before they’d even gotten back. 

When Damon got to the room, Elena was already there, lounging on the bed and writing in her journal and Damon grinned, stripping out of his tux and climbing into bed next to her. He leaned against her and pressed a kiss to her bare shoulder before nuzzling her neck. “You know, you look just as entrancing out of that dress as you did in it.”

“Mmm,” Elena hummed as she turned to kiss him softly. “And I could say the same to you.” 

“I’d rather you prove it,” Damon smirked. Elena laughed and set her journal to the side, sliding down the bed as she kissed Damon deeply and proceeded to spend the next hour proving it thoroughly before they fell asleep. 

The next few months were spent traipsing across France. They spent almost an entire month in Paris before moving on, hitting all the big spots. Damon and Kai secretly coordinated all the romantic spots so they wouldn’t hit them at the same time and end up running into each other on their date nights. They also made the promised trip up the stairs of the Eiffel Tower, hit the Louvre, the Notre Dame Cathedral where they all took their chance to ring the famous bell. 

Their tour of the city also included a group trip to the Opera House where they played around on stage and pretended to sing Opera and ad-libbed little plays including a pretend fight between Damon and Kai over the girls who pretended to try to break up the fight. It took a turn for the absurd when Damon turned the joke around and pretended to be in love with Kai and even planted a kiss on his stunned lips as the girls fell over laughing. 

By the time they left France, the L word had been dropped between Kai and Bonnie, but they had yet to sleep together, prompting Bonnie to get Elena to have Damon talk to Kai and figure out what the problem was. When Damon learned that Kai was a virgin and more than a little nervous about changing that, especially with someone that he loved as much as Bonnie, he resisted the urge to make fun of him. That would be for another time. For now, it was time for brotherly duties. He gave Kai a pep talk as well as some helpful tips and sent him on his way. 

It was their first night in their next destination, Norway, when Kai spent the night in Bonnie’s room for the first time. And then never left it. The next almost year was spent moving through all the old Viking sites throughout the entire Nordic region, helped along by Kai’s ability to sense magic. What they found was split between the runic language, which was translatable by spell, and cave drawings which were not. Thankfully, more often than not things were a combination of the two and the words helped them to decipher the drawings. 

Between the expanse of the nomadic culture’s area and the sheer number of sites, not to mention the difficulty in finding most of them, they spent a long time exploring the old Viking magic, including finding indications of the spell cast by Esther Mikaelson that created the original vampires. She apparently wasn’t the only one of her people to attempt such a thing. It wasn’t the complete spell of course, since that was only created once they’d moved to America, but none of them really wanted the complete spell, though they could probably piece it together from the fragments here eventually if they wanted to. 

Once they were done there, it was time for their next pleasure trip, and Damon flew them down to Milan. Back to his ancestral roots. A few weeks after they got there, the girls were out hitting the high end clothing stores while the guys just walked around seeing the sights as they talked for a while. It was mid-morning before they decided to hunt down the girls and see what they were up to. Since they knew the area they were in, from there it was just a matter of Damon following his ears. 

He narrowed it down to the specific store as he heard Bonnie’s exclamation of, “Oh my god, Elena. It’s amazing.” 

He walked in the door with a grin that quickly fell into a completely gob smacked look as he saw Elena twirling in the most perfect wedding dress he’d ever seen. The shoulders and collar were sheer making it look almost strapless as it wrapped tightly around her all the way to her knees where it flared out. It had a cape style sheer train attached at the shoulders that fell to the floor at least two feet behind her and the bodice was laced with pearls that made the whole dress shimmer in the light. She looked like an angel and he lost the ability to breathe as he saw her. 

When Elena finished her turn and noticed Damon staring at her, she froze. She hadn’t meant for him to see her trying on wedding dresses. It wasn’t like he’d ever shown any interest in the idea of marriage anyway, though that could just be a vampire thing. There were a lot of human institutions that he didn’t consider much. Still…she didn’t want him to think that she was hinting for something. 

Kai bit his lip so hard it almost bled in his efforts not to laugh at the two of them and Bonnie wasn’t doing much better as her eyes filled with the tears of the laughter she was just barely managing to hold back. Neither Bonnie nor Kai dared to look at each other lest they lose their battles and break the moment. They both wanted to see what their friends would do next. 

“Damon, I…” Elena started to try and explain, but her words caught in her throat as Damon moved. 

As soon as Elena started to speak, Damon jolted into movement and blurred forward, falling to a knee in front of her and breathed out, “Marry me,” as he took her hand and pulled it to his lips. 

“I wasn’t trying to hint at anything,” Elena managed to say despite feeling like she was about to faint. 

“I don’t care,” Damon shook his head. “Just…marry me?” 

“How?” Elena breathed out. 

Bonnie’s hand had clapped over her mouth the second Damon spoke and her tears took on a whole new meaning as they leaked from her eyes. Kai was the one to speak there. “I can perform the ceremony,” he offered. “I mean, I’m not ordained or anything, but since there’s nowhere here to file it…”

Elena barely heard his words register as she was still caught in Damon’s hopeful gaze as he looked up at her with her hand still wrapped in both of his. “Yes,” she finally couldn’t stop herself from breathing out. Damon jumped to his feet, wrapping his arms around her waist and lifting her in the air, spinning her around as she grinned and said, “Yes, I’ll marry you.” Damon lowered her down and kissed her long and slow as Kai and Bonnie clapped. 

Bonnie waited until the moment was over before pointing out, “You do realize that it’s bad luck for the groom to see the dress before the wedding day right?” 

Damon grinned wider, not taking his eyes off Elena, as he said, “Then I guess today better be the wedding day, huh.”


	12. Chapter 12

“What…now?” Elena asked stunned. 

“Absolutely,” Damon grinned. “Nothing would make me happier than to be your husband, Elena, and I don’t want to wait one second longer than I have to.”

“It’s just so sudden…”

“If you’re not sure…”

“No, I’m sure,” she shook her head profusely. “I’m definitely sure. But…are you?” 

“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my entire hundred and seventy five years alive,” Damon breathed out. 

“Then okay. Let’s do this,” Elena grinned. “But not here.”

“No, not here. How about in the Milan Cathedral?” Damon suggested. 

“That’s perfect,” Elena grinned. “But you need a tux.” 

“I’ll take care of that right now,” Damon agreed. 

“Okay, Damon you got get a tux and rings. I’ll take care of the video camera and music,” Kai suggested. 

“I’ll take care of a bouquet and help with your hair and make-up and jewelry,” Bonnie told Elena. 

“We’ll meet there in two hours?” Kai asked. 

“Make it four,” Bonnie told him. It may be last minute, but there was no way Elena was going to be anything but perfect on her wedding day. 

“Four hours it is,” Damon agreed, giving Elena one more hard kiss before he and Kai left and split up. Damon went for the jewelry store first and Elena and Bonnie came in just a few minutes after him to find the cases already broken as he was looking for wedding rings. Elena was going back and forth between giving her opinion on those and the jewelry Bonnie was picking out for her to wear. Once they decided on the wedding rings, Damon put them in his pocket and moved over to the back, grabbing a silver and diamond tiara from the case and placing it on her head before he kissed her one more time and rushed out to get his own tux. 

Elena and Bonnie couldn’t help but laugh at his excitement even as their own bubbled up just as fiercely. “Is this really happening?” Elena asked Bonnie feeling like she was caught up in a whirlwind. 

“Yeah. It really is,” she grinned at her best friend. 

“Do you think I’m making a mistake?” Elena asked, biting her lip. 

“Not a chance. There have never been two people more destined for each other than you and Damon. He would have married you forever ago if it had dawned on him,” Bonnie chuckled. 

“You really think so?” Elena asked happily. 

“Sweetie, he would have married you at graduation if you’d have let him,” Bonnie assured her. She knew that Elena didn’t have any doubts for her side, but Damon’s usual impulsiveness is where her concern was coming from. She didn’t want him to regret it later. Legal or not this was as real as possible for her and it was painfully clear that Damon felt the same. 

Damon got to the site two hours before the girls were due to find Kai setting up half a dozen different video cameras. “Overkill much?” Damon chuckled. 

“I couldn’t decide which angle would be best and since we don’t have a videographer, I figured we’d just get them all,” Kai shrugged. 

“Makes sense to me,” Damon grinned. He wanted every second and every angle of this immortalized forever. “What do you need me to do?” 

“Go stand where you’re gonna be standing so I can double check the angles,” Kai told him. It took a little while for him to get the three cameras that were going to be getting the ceremony part right and then Kai told him to walk up from the back so he could check the angles for Elena’s entrance. One to catch her as she came in the doors, one watching her back as she walked by, and the last behind Damon to catch them both the whole time. “Okay, just one more, but I’m gonna need you to place it.”

“Where?” Damon asked curiously. 

“Can you jump up there to that beam?” Kai asked, wanting a good aerial shot of the whole thing. 

“Let me guess…you wanted to be a movie director?” Damon laughed as he took the camera and did as he was asked, making sure that it had a good view of the entire area. 

“Maybe,” Kai muttered sheepishly with a shrug. 

“What else do you need me to do?” Damon asked, jittery with anticipation. 

“Nothing. Just relax and wait,” Kai grinned. 

“Then I’m gonna need a drink,” Damon chuckled. 

“Way ahead of you, pal,” Kai told him pulling a bottle and two glasses out from behind one of the columns and he poured them both one. 

Kai limited himself to just one, but Damon had a few with his vampire tolerance before the door at the back opened and Bonnie stuck her head in. “You guys ready?”

“Give us a minute. Wait until you hear the music,” Kai called back, the sound echoing through the cavernous room. He hid the booze so it wouldn’t be in any of the videos and straightened his own tux before nodding at Damon who blurred around the room and started all the video cameras almost simultaneously. Once he was back in his place, Kai leaned down and hit play on the boombox and the bridal song started to play. 

Damon’s breath caught again, despite the fact that he’d already seen her in the dress, as Elena walked in the doors with Bonnie on her arm, apparently giving her away. Damon was completely entranced during her entire trip down the aisle, and he barely hear Kai start the ceremony, reading from a book. “Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today to join Damon Salvatore and Elena Gilbert in the union of marriage. Damon…”

Damon squeezed Elena’s hands as he started to speak. Obviously nothing had been prepared but he had always been pretty good at speaking from the heart. “We promised each other a long time ago that this was forever. That /we/ were forever, and I mean that promise just as much today as I did then. And just as much as I’ll mean it a thousand years from now. There is nothing I wouldn’t give to be your husband. Your partner. For the rest of our eternity. I love you, Elena. And I will love you until I take my last breath.” 

“Elena…” Kai prompted. 

Elena sniffled as the tears streaming down her face threatened to ruin Bonnie’s makeup job. Not that Bonnie’s makeup was faring much better. “On our first date you were talking about our five-year anniversary. On our third, I asked you for forever. We were always going to end up here. Because we have a love that consumes us, bolstered by passion…and adventure…and even a little danger,” they both grinned at her words, remembering their first meeting. “My place in this world or any other is and will always be by your side. I am all in, Damon. Now and forever. I will love you until I take my last breath,” she stole his ending, but he didn’t care in the slightest. 

“Do you, Damon, take Elena to be your wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, for as long as you both exist?” Kai made a quick change to the standard vows to take into account the fact that they were both technically dead already. Twice over considering both the vampirism and the fact that they died coming here. 

“I do,” Damon whispered with a bright smile. 

“And do you, Elena, take Damon to be your wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, as long as you both exist?” 

“I do,” Elena breathed out, blinking the tears out of her eyes as she gazed into Damon’s. 

“Damon and Elena will now exchange rings as a symbol of love and commitment to each other. They mark the beginning of your long journey together. Your wedding ring is a circle—a symbol of love never ending. It is the seal of the vows you have just taken to love each other without end,” Kai said, waiting a moment for Damon to get the rings out of his pocket and hand the man’s ring to Elena. “Damon, place the ring on Elena’s left hand and repeat after me. With this ring, I thee wed.” 

“With this ring, I thee wed,” Damon said, voice shaking with emotion. 

“Elena place the ring on Damon’s left hand and repeat after me. With this ring, I thee wed.”

“With this ring, I thee wed,” Elena whispered around the lump in her throat. 

“By the power vested in me by…no one…I pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride,” Kai grinned. 

He had barely gotten the words out before Damon pulled Elena forward, their hands still clasped between them and leaned forward for a long loving kiss that she returned with just as much fervor. Once it was done, Damon swept her up in his arms, carrying her back down the aisle in the aptly named bridal carry. She laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck kissing him again as they walked.


	13. Chapter 13

Kai and Bonnie watched them go with a smile before they started collecting the cameras and headed back to their hotel themselves. They had missed lunch with all this and it was getting close to dinnertime too so they headed for the hotel kitchen first and cooked a nice meal together. Their next stop was the conference room where the computer system was all set up and they put all the videos and the still pictures that Bonnie had grabbed during the ceremony onto the computer and one of the thumb drives, labeling it with Damon and Elena’s wedding. Elena usually handled the computer stuff, but they were proficient enough by now to be able to handle it. Just not as quickly or easily. Once they were done with that, they retired to their own room for the night. 

They stayed in Milan for another week before they moved on and travelled across Italy, spending a few weeks in Venice along the way. Their last stop was Rome, but it quickly turned into more of a ‘work’ trip when Kai sensed a crap ton of magic surrounding the Vatican so they went to check it out. They found a secret room, magically hidden, at the back of the Vatican’s library and they found another library. It contained all the grimoires and magical artifacts that had been stolen from the witches during the crusades as well as quite a bit on a new type of magic that they hadn’t encountered yet that they called ‘Enochian Magic’ which ended up being quite a bit darker than they would have expected from the church. 

It took them a month to mine all that information and Kai siphoned most of the artifacts, though there were a few that could come in handy later on that they left alone and took with them. He was still pretty full up on magic from Stonehenge not to mention all the other spells and artifacts he’d siphoned along the way, but the nice thing about being a siphoner was that there was no limit to how much magic he could hold. At least normal magic. Since the Vatican ended up being such a trove of knowledge, Elena had the idea to check out the Jewish sites as well, so that stop was added to their itinerary next and ended up being even more fruitful than the Vatican. 

After two months in Jerusalem, they got back on track and headed for Czechia. They knew that neither of them would be able to perform traveler magic, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t learn about it. Especially after what led to this situation in the first place, they wanted to know as much as they could so that they could at least have a chance to fight it. They knew that the travelers moved around constantly and finding where they were at a random date in ninety four was all but impossible, but they suspected that there was a central storehouse of their knowledge anyway and if there was Czechia would be the best place to find it. 

Kai’s ability to sense magic led them to what looked like an empty lot, but when Damon went to walk into it, Kai grabbed him and yanked him back. “Don’t!” he said in almost a panic. “There is a massive curse over this place. I can’t quite tell what it does, but it’s very black magic.” 

“Can you siphon it?” Bonnie asked, knowing that they wouldn’t be able to break it. Even if she had her magic too, traveler magic was too different. 

“I should be able to, yeah,” Kai nodded as he crouched down and dug his fingers into the dirt. He quickly learned the difference between normal magic and black magic though as he almost felt like he was being consumed by it. He only had about half the spell down by the time he fell to his knees with a scream of pain. 

“Kai!” Bonnie cried, rushing to his side even as he continued to fall. He made sure that his hand didn’t lose contact with the siphon point though. 

“Kai, stop. We can find another way,” Elena begged. 

“Can’t,” Kai ground out, sweat pouring from his forehead as his temperature spiked. “If I let go now the backlash will kill us all…it’s a failsafe,” he explained. 

Bonnie pulled Kai’s head into her lap, running her hand through his sweat-slick hair as tears ran down her cheeks and Elena moved to his side and took his other hand. “Is there anything we can do?” Damon asked, feeling helpless and hating every second of it. 

“Just…don’t let this be for nothing,” Kai ground out as the last of the spell entered him and the compound became visible. He curled up in a ball and started vomiting black blood. Bonnie didn’t even care about what was getting on her pants as she just held him with tears still flowing down her cheeks. 

Elena was crying too as Damon came over and put a hand on her shoulder. “Come on, baby. You heard him. Let’s see what we can find.”

Elena took a few deep breaths before she got up and followed him. To Damon it looked a lot like the last traveler compound he’d been in, but this one had a lot more books and fewer artifacts. Apparently, the artifacts were what they took with them. Most of the books were handwritten, as most of the ones they’d come across were, so they started packing them all up with vampire speed, wanting to get back to Kai. 

They got the RV loaded up, always bringing that instead of Damon’s car when they actually expected to find something simply for the space, and then headed back to Kai. “He’s unconscious,” Bonnie said worriedly. “And his fever is so high.” 

Damon bent down to pick him up and Bonnie was right. Kai’s skin felt like fire and he was still pouring sweat in buckets. He carried him to the SUV and they headed to the hospital instead of their hotel. None of them knew what to do really, but at least they could take his temperature there and try a few things. While Damon carried him inside and got him comfortable, Bonnie and Elena split up to try and find something that might help. 

Damon took Kai’s temperature while they were gone and frowned. He didn’t know much about medicine, but even he knew that one oh five point eight wasn’t good at all. He grabbed a blanket and soaked it in cold water from the shower and wrapped it around his best friend just as the girls got back with a few different options. They started out by giving him a large dose of Acetaminophen to bring down the fever and then started discussing the antibiotic options. “Do you really think antibiotics are going to help black magic overload?” Damon asked incredulously. 

“Probably not,” Elena admitted. “But who knows what this fever is doing to his body. It can’t hurt.”

Damon conceded the point and they started trying to get an IV line so they could give it to him. Bonnie didn’t dare even try. Even if she knew what to do, she could barely even see through her tears and just grabbed a cold rag to mop at his forehead. Elena’s father was a doctor though, and while she had no actual training, she’d seen it done enough of times to have a decent idea what to do. It took her a few tries to get it in, but soon enough the antibiotics were flowing through Kai’s system and all they could do now was wait and hope. 

Damon brought three other beds into the room and all the books in the RV were forgotten for the moment as they sat vigil by their friend’s side. It was a long two days before Kai woke up. His fever got slightly lower every so often but never got below one oh four. They kept him wrapped in cool wet blankets and kept as much fever reducer in his system as he could handle. 

When Kai did wake up, he squeezed Bonnie’s hand and gave her a weak smile before his eyes searched out Damon. “Kill me, Damon.” He knew that no one else would be able to stomach it. 

“Kai, no!” Bonnie cried out. 

“S’okay Bon,” Kai told her weakly, knowing that Damon and Elena were listening too. “I’ll come back remember. Once the day resets, so will I and I’ll be as good as new.” 

“He’s got a point,” Elena said biting her lip as her eyes filled with tears again. 

“Please, Damon,” Kai begged. “It’s better than suffering for who knows how much longer before I die anyway.”

Damon nodded curtly and moved over. “You girls should go.” 

“No,” Bonnie shook her head frantically, tears pouring down her face. 

“Come on, Bonnie. Let’s go find something to eat. You haven’t eaten yet today,” Elena said ignoring her own tears in favor of her friend. She didn’t want Bonnie to have to see this and she didn’t want to see it herself either. 

Once Bonnie let Elena drag her out, Damon locked the door and turned to Kai. “You know…I’ve managed to make it almost three years without killing anyone. Now you’re messing up my streak,” he joked. 

“Sorry,” Kai chuckled weakly. “But I’m sure Elena will forgive you.” 

“She better or I’m taking it out on you, little brother,” Damon tried to keep things light before he reached over and snapped Kai’s neck.


	14. Chapter 14

It was about an hour before Damon heard the doorknob jiggle. “Damon, open the door,” Elena called from the other side. 

“Not yet,” he called back. “I’ll let you in when he’s back,” Damon promised. 

“Damnit Damon, open this damn door,” Bonnie yelled. 

“Bonnie…Bonnie!” Elena pulled her back from banging on it. “Damon’s right. We don’t need to see him like that. He wouldn’t want you to see him like that.” 

“I-I love him, Elena,” Bonnie cried. 

“I know, Bonnie,” Elena hugged her tightly. “Which is exactly why you don’t need to see him right now.” 

Elena pulled her into the next room and sat next to her on the bed, holding her as she cried. “H-how does Damon do it? H-he loves Kai too,” Bonnie asked. 

“Yeah. He does. But Damon carries these burdens so no one else has to,” Elena explained. “He does what’s necessary to protect the rest of us. Including Kai.” 

It was a few hours before the door to their room opened and Kai stepped in looking as good as new. Bonnie was off the bed like a shot and in his arms as he held her tightly. Elena looked up and saw Damon leaning on the door jam and gave him a soft smile which he returned. Elena waited until Kai and Bonnie let go of each other before trapping Kai in a big hug of her own. “You scared us to death,” she told him. 

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “It wasn’t intentional.” Once the greetings were done, he turned to Bonnie. “Do you mind if I borrow a bit of magic? Just to get me through until our next stop?”

“You’re out of magic?” Bonnie asked worriedly, holding out her hand in invitation. 

Kai took her hand and siphoned a little bit of magic from her as he explained. “I’m completely reset. Including my magic. But that’s okay. The black traveler magic was consuming the magic I already had anyway.”

“Yeah, we definitely don’t want you trying to siphon anymore traveler magic,” Elena huffed. 

“I would probably be okay as long as it wasn’t black magic, but better safe than sorry, I agree,” Kai nodded. 

“As long as you know that you will /not/ test that theory,” Bonnie said firmly. 

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Kai chuckled. “So what did we find in the compound.”

“A lot of books,” Damon told him. “We grabbed them all, but we haven’t looked at them yet.” 

“Well what are we waiting for?” Kai asked amusedly. “Let’s go see what was so worth it.”

“Tomorrow,” Bonnie said seriously. “Tonight you’re mine.”

“Yes ma’am,” Kai laughed and let her lead him out, Damon and Elena following behind. 

Once they got back to the hotel, Bonnie and Kai disappeared for their room, so Damon and Elena unpacked the boxes into the conference room where the computer was already set up. “I think Bonnie had the right idea,” Damon said with a smirk once it was all unloaded. “The rest of this can wait until tomorrow.”

“You read my mind,” Elena grinned and jumped into her husband’s arms, wrapping her legs around his waist. It was a move they were long familiar with, so Damon didn’t even stumble at all as he kissed her deeply, already walking back towards their room. Bonnie had threatened him with emasculation if he ever ‘despoiled’ the shared work area or he wouldn’t have bothered leaving. 

The next morning, they got to work cataloging and sorting the traveler library which ended up taking them two weeks. During their first guy’s night, Kai brought up the big subject with Damon though. “How would you feel about performing a wedding ceremony?” 

“You and Bon-bon are getting married?” Damon asked enthusiastically.

“Well, I haven’t actually asked her yet. I wanted to make sure you’d be okay with it first,” Kai said nervously. The very thought of popping the question terrified him, but he wanted this badly. 

“Yeah, of course. Whatever you need. You know I’ve got your back, brother,” Damon assured him. 

“You want to help me pick a ring too?” Kai asked hopefully. Since his was actually planned and not spur of the moment, a ring was a must. 

“What are we sitting here for?” Damon laughed as he got off the barstool and grabbed Kai to head for the door. He stopped halfway and rushed back to grab the bottle and then they were on their way. 

Once they had the perfect ring, Kai asked, “How do you think I should ask her?” 

Damon chuckled as he said, “I don’t know that I’m the best person to ask there. Look what I ended up doing.” 

“Well you got the yes didn’t you?” Kai pointed out amusedly. 

“Only because she loved me too much to say no,” Damon pointed out. “Which means no matter how you do it, you’ll get the yes too.” 

Damon wasted no time in telling his wife what they’d spent the evening doing when he got back, knowing that she wouldn’t spill to Bonnie. She was good at keeping secrets. “Well they have been together for about two years now,” she pointed out, realizing that they’d been in this world for three years. Time really did fly when you were having fun. 

Kai still hadn’t popped the question though by the time they left Czechia and were on the plane headed for Egypt, but he did remind everyone that this was a more dangerous stop. “The ancient Egyptians were known for their curses. Make sure that you don’t touch anything until I’ve cleared it.” 

“We won’t,” Damon assured him with a roll of his eyes. 

“You’re sure you won’t have any problems like with the traveler thing?” Bonnie asked worriedly. 

“I’m sure. The Egyptians used spirit magic just like we do. Even dark magics can be cleansed by my system as long as they’re spirit based,” Kai promised. 

“But if you take too much of it…” Elena said concerned. 

“If I take too much at once then yeah, it can overwhelm me and mess with my head for a while, but it won’t kill me or even make me sick. And I’ll be careful not to take on too much at once.” 

“Please do. I’d prefer not to have to kill you again if you get all murdery,” Damon partially joked. 

They learned over the next six months that there were a lot of magically hidden spaces deep in the tombs and pyramids. Pictures were taken of all the writings on the walls, both in the open areas and the hidden ones, though they were marked separately, just in case the Egyptians used the open areas to give misinformation that was corrected in the hidden spaces. They found a lot of ancient scrolls as well that they packed up to take with them. Most of what was hidden were artifacts though. While there were quite a few curses that Kai had to siphon, none of them were actual dark magic. 

There were a lot of cursed objects too, and a few of those were dark, but not enough to overwhelm the siphon witch. Most of the objects were just packed up for later though. In case Kai ran out of magic again and needed a boost. They were very careful not to set off any of the curses, but sometimes even careful isn’t enough. Elena’s hand brushed against one of them as she was wrapping it up and everyone’s attention was drawn by her scream of pain as her hand started to mummify. 

Kai vaulted over the pile he was working on, shoving Damon out of the way before he could touch her and took Elena’s hand in his, focusing on siphoning the magic out of the curse. It didn’t take long before her hand and arm where it had spread was back to normal and Elena thanked him profusely, as did Damon. Kai wasn’t the only one to save the day during their time in Egypt though. There were a couple times that Damon snatched snakes out of midair as they were headed for someone, and even Elena caught a few. 

While the vampires were theoretically immune to snake bites, there was no telling if these snakes were part of a curse or not, so it was best not to take any chances. Needless to say, Egypt was definitely an adventure, and one that they enjoyed immensely despite the danger. Unfortunately, it just made Bonnie feel even more useless than usual. She had almost gotten used to the idea of not being able to access her magic, but times like that made it harder to deal with. 

Kai had the perfect idea to cheer her up though, with some prompting from Damon, who made sure to be nearby with the camera ready. Kai set up a picnic for them under the sphinx…once they cleared the area the sphinx was hiding of course…and used the chance to pop the question and Bonnie immediately agreed. Unlike Damon and Elena, they didn’t rush into the wedding immediately though and took the time to plan it. Bonnie downright refused to get married in Egypt. Far too much sand for her taste, so it would wait until their next stop.


	15. Chapter 15

After six months in Egypt, they had their next planned pleasure trip. This one far out of the way as Damon flew them down to Australia to hit the beaches. While they all knew that Australia had plenty of aboriginal magic, they also knew that none of that would be written down or recorded. They did take plenty of time to explore the different caves and caverns while they were there though. It was mostly for fun, but they did keep an eye out for any drawings or carvings that might be useful and they did find a few, but whether they were magical or not was up for debate. And it was heavily debated often. 

It was during this trip that Kai and Bonnie decided to have their wedding. They did it in one of the caves off the beach. The cave in question had plenty of light from a partially open ceiling and some sort of deposits or maybe even bacteria in the rocks that gave it an ethereal glow. From the spot they chose the beach could still be seen in the background out of the mouth of the cave so they got all the beauty of a beach wedding at sunset plus some without the abundance of sand. 

Elena helped Bonnie pick out her dress which was strapless with a sweetheart neckline in a tight sheath style with only a slight train. It wasn’t completely white. It was more of a very light shimmery silver color and the silk material made it even more so. They suspected that the glow of the cave would make for an amazing effect and they were right. Given the effect they were going for, Bonnie’s makeup had a bit of glitter in it as well and her something borrowed was Elena’s tiara from her wedding. 

As Bonnie walked into the cave she was lit up like an angel and Damon actually had to reach out to steady Kai when he stumbled. Damon definitely didn’t blame him though. He was pretty speechless himself and he wasn’t in love with her and the one marrying her. Once he was sure that Kai wasn’t going to pass out, he turned to the ceremony. “Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today to join Malakai Parker and Bonnie Bennett in the union of marriage. Kai…”

“I spent eighteen years in isolation before you walked into my life and lit it up like a jewel. The chance to meet you made every moment of loneliness worth it and I’d do it all again a hundred times over if it meant getting the chance to love you. You are my life, Bonnie. In this world or any other. I could meet every person in existence and never find anyone as perfect for me as you are. I will love you with every beat of my heart for as long as I exist.” 

Bonnie smiled brightly, tears shining in her eyes as she gazed into his. “You have been my rock, Kai. You have never stopped believing in me, even when I don’t believe in myself. You give me hope when it seems like all is lost. I don’t know if we’ll ever get home or not, but in this world or any other, I will be by your side just as you’ve been by mine. Ending up here was a blessing because it brought me to the love of my life and whether we’re here for ten years or a hundred, it will all be worth it. I will love you with every beat of my heart for as long as I exist.” They had both been touched by the way that Elena had echoed the last words of Damon’s vows and planned the same. 

Damon smiled as he moved on to the next part. “Do you, Malakai, take Bonnie to be your wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, for as long as you both exist?”

“I do,” Kai said softly, squeezing Bonnie’s hands. 

“And do you, Bonnie, take Malakai to be your wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, as long as you both exist?” 

“I do,” Bonnie whispered as her tears finally began to fall, streaking the glittery makeup. 

“Malakai and Bonnie will now exchange rings as a symbol of love and commitment to each other. They mark the beginning of your long journey together. Your wedding ring is a circle—a symbol of love never ending. It is the seal of the vows you have just taken to love each other without end,” Damon said as he took the rings from Elena who was holding onto them. He gave them the wrong rings first and there was a pause to chuckle as they fixed it before they continued. “Malakai, place the ring on Bonnie’s left hand and repeat after me. With this ring, I thee wed.”

“With this ring, I thee wed,” Kai said shakily, sliding the ring onto her finger as a few tears escaped his own eyes. 

“Bonnie, place the ring on Malakai’s left hand and repeat after me. With this ring, I thee wed.”

“With this ring, I thee wed,” Bonnie’s voice shook as she slid the ring on Kai’s finger, emotion overwhelming her. 

“I pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride,” Damon said with a grin and he and Elena broke out into applause as Kai swept Bonnie up in a searing kiss. 

Kai tried to copy Damon’s move of carrying Bonnie out of there, but he didn’t have vampire strength, so he stumbled a few times and almost dropped her, before Bonnie slid down. “I’ll just walk,” she laughed, hooking her arm in his and leaning her head on his shoulder as they walked back out of the cave. 

They were a little farther from the hotel they were staying in than they had been for Damon and Elena’s wedding, so they were taking Damon’s car back so the vampires would just have to run it. First though, they stopped all the video cameras and gathered them up. “That was a beautiful wedding,” Elena told Damon wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her head on his chest. 

“It really was,” Damon smiled, resting his head on hers as he held her. “And I have to say the whole glowing bride theme was pretty awesome.” 

“It came off a lot better than we expected. I thought Kai was going to faint for a minute there,” she chuckled. 

“So did I,” Damon laughed. “It was pretty close I think.” 

“It was almost as perfect as our wedding,” Elena grinned and looked up at him. 

“Almost,” Damon smiled and pressed a kiss to her lips. “But as far as I’m concerned, nothing will ever be as perfect as the day you became my wife. It was the highlight of my entire existence.”

“So no regrets?” she chuckled. 

“Not a one,” Damon assured her with a grin. “What about you?” 

“I know that I haven’t lived nearly as long as you, but even a thousand years from now I will still see that day as the highlight of my existence too. Marrying you was the best thing I ever did.” 

Damon pulled her into a long slow kiss before pulling her out to the beach and they made love right there in the sand long into the night before they finally went back to the hotel. They were too tired at that point to do anything but go right to sleep, but when they woke up the next morning, Elena took all the cameras to the computer area and got the video and pictures put on a new thumb drive and got it labeled. They were going to wait until they got home to try and figure out decent video editing software to put together real videos, but for now, they had the events recorded. 

Once that was done, Damon joined her with blood bags for them both and slid his chair up behind her, resting his chin on her shoulder as she pulled up her favorite angle from their wedding for them to watch. It had been almost two years since they were married and they fell more in love every day.

They didn’t see much of Kai and Bonnie for the next few days, but they hadn’t expected to. They had secluded themselves away for a while after their wedding too. When the newlyweds did rejoin them, they continued their tour of Australia and spent the remainder of their time there in complete frivolity and even extended it by a month when Kai got it in his head to learn to surf. Bonnie joined him most of the time but never got the hang of it and both the vampires avoided it like the plague. As Damon had once mentioned, vampires hate to swim. Eventually though, they had to move on. They were nice enough to wait until Kai was a halfway decent surfer though.


	16. Chapter 16

After Australia, they started working their way through Asia, saving Japan for last since that one would mix business and pleasure. It was almost an entire year before they made it that far though. There were as many magical cultures as there were countries and more than one in some. While a lot of it had been gutted by humanity, they were still able to find more than a few hidden stores of ancient knowledge. Like with everywhere else they went, they also raided the private libraries of local witches. While there was still some searching for ways to get Bonnie’s magic back, it had long become more about the accumulation of knowledge than the end goal. 

Bonnie and Kai celebrated their one year wedding anniversary in Japan as they delved into the rich magical culture there, with plenty of sightseeing thrown in along the way. That was where they found the most promising lead yet on getting Bonnie’s magic back. There was an artifact that was supposed to help witches who had lost their tether to magic. There wasn’t a lot of information on how it worked though, so it made them all nervous. Bonnie insisted on trying it though. Only the fact that Kai couldn’t sense anything dark about it had them allowing it. 

Unfortunately, it didn’t do anything. Not that they knew of anyway. It would be a few months before they figured out the results and they had just been wrapping things up there when it happened. Bonnie kept getting sick every night after dinner, but then she was fine the rest of the time. It was Elena that figured it out first and focused her hearing to confirm before going out to get a pregnancy test. “I’m on the pill, Elena,” Bonnie reminded her. They’d been here for over five years. She’d been sleeping with Kai for more than four. If she was going to end up pregnant it should have happened a long time ago.

“We don’t know what that artifact did to you. Maybe it negated all that. Even if it didn’t, the pill isn’t a hundred percent, you know,” Elena pointed out. 

“Oh god,” Bonnie breathed out and Elena had to catch her and steer her to the bed to sit. “What if…I mean…we haven’t even talked about…”

“Just breathe, Bonnie,” Elena coaxed, glad that she’d timed this when the guys were having their night out. “Let’s just see what the test says first okay?” 

“Yeah…okay,” Bonnie said nervously as she headed to the bathroom. Deep down she had a feeling the test was going to be positive and she didn’t know how she felt about that other than terrified. 

Five minutes later they had the results and as expected, they were positive. Bonnie was pregnant. “Congratulations,” Elena said with a smile, forcing her jealousy to the back of her mind. She would give just about anything to be a mother. 

“What are we gonna do, Elena? There aren’t any doctors or…or anything…what if something happens? What if…”

Elena pulled her into a hug. “Shh. It’ll be okay. We’ll handle it. I promise,” she assured her. Once Bonnie was calmer, she let go and started addressing the reasonable concerns. “I’ll start reading up on what to do to deliver the baby. We can stop by the pharmacy and grab you some prenatal vitamins and we’ll just be careful and do our best to make sure nothing bad happens to you or the baby. I’m sure I’ll be able to figure out how to use an ultrasound machine and fetal heart monitor and since those are just outside, it should be safe so we can keep an eye on how it’s going.” Obviously she wasn’t about to touch any of the internal tests even if she could figure out how to do it. It wasn’t worth the risk. But the rest she could do.

“You really think we can do this?” Bonnie asked desperately. 

“I /know/ we can,” Elena promised. “I know you did a lot of reading on prison worlds from your family books once we figured out that’s where we were. Do you know how this is possible? I mean, with us not aging…” Not that she or Damon would age anyway given that they were vampires, but Bonnie and Kai weren’t aging either. 

“We’re not native to this world which is why we’re not aging. The baby will be born here and age normally.”

“And when we go back home?” 

“He or she will still age normally there since it’s the primary plane of existence. Everyone and everything ages there…with the obvious exceptions of course,” Bonnie chuckled. 

“Okay, which means that he or she will be perfectly healthy and normal and there’s nothing to worry about.” She wasn’t going to say a word about the fact that she was pretty sure that she could hear two tiny heartbeats. Not until she was sure anyway. Preferably confirmed with an ultrasound. 

“You’ll really deliver the baby for me?” Bonnie asked hopefully. 

“Of course. Unless you’d rather someone else…”

“No,” Bonnie said quickly. “Kai would probably faint at the very idea and I’d much rather have you than Damon poking around that area when the time comes.” 

Elena laughed and nodded. “I can definitely understand that. Come on. Lets go ahead and hit up the hospital for the vitamins and I’ll see if I can’t grab some books, assuming I can find some in English, on what I need.” They didn’t end up finding any English medical books that would help Elena through the delivery, but the instruction manuals for the equipment were in multiple languages including English, so Elena grabbed those. 

By the time they got back to the hotel, the guys were coming back too. Elena grabbed Damon’s hand and told Bonnie, “We’ll give you two some time…”

“No, stay. Please,” Bonnie asked. She could use the moral support. 

“What’s going on?” Kai asked worriedly. 

“You might want to sit down,” Bonnie took his hands and started leading him over to the lobby couch.

“You’re making me nervous, Bon. What’s is it?” 

“Is she okay?” Damon whispered quietly enough that only Elena could hear it. 

“More than,” Elena whispered back. 

“Just sit down,” Bonnie coaxed. 

“Bonnie…” Kai all but snapped. He was beyond worried now and wasn’t going to do anything until she told him what was going on. 

“I’m pregnant,” Bonnie blurted out, realizing that she was freaking him out more by putting it off. 

“You…you’re…I…we…”

Damon blurred forward and caught Kai as his legs gave way and steered him to the couch. “Might should’ve sat down when she told you to there, little brother,” Damon said with a laugh. 

Bonnie went to sit next to him. “Do you have any /actual/ words?” she asked with nervous amusement. 

“You’re…I’m…we’re…” Kai stammered.

”Well that’s words. Now lets try for a sentence,” Damon teased. 

“Damon,” Elena scolded amusedly as she smacked his arm. 

“I’m gonna be a dad,” Kai finally managed to say in breathless amazement. 

“Yeah. You are,” Bonnie said biting her lip, trying to figure out how he actually felt about that. 

She didn’t have to wonder for long though because he reached out and yanked her into his lap, giving her a hard happy kiss. “I’m gonna be a dad,” he said again as his grin threatened to break his face in half. 

Bonnie couldn’t help but grin back at him. His happiness was almost contagious. When she kissed him again, Damon chuckled and wrapped his arm around Elena who told him. “I don’t think they need us for moral support anymore.”

“Oh yes. I’m fairly certain they can handle the next part themselves,” Damon said amusedly as they turned and headed back to their room. 

Once they were there, Elena immediately headed for the shower, and Damon frowned after her. There was something off about her, he just couldn’t put his finger on what. He waited until she got out before he asked her, “Are you okay?” 

“Of course, I am. Why wouldn’t I be?” 

“See, now I’m positive that you’re not,” Damon said, reaching out to grab her hand and pull her into his lap. “Talk to me, Elena.” 

“I feel like a horrible friend,” Elena sighed sadly. 

“Why?” Damon prodded. 

“Because she’s all happy and having a baby and all I can do is just wish it could be me,” she admitted. 

“You think you’re the only one?” Damon sighed leaning his forehead against her temple. 

“You too?” Elena turned to look at him. 

“Back when I was human, before I met Katherine, the only thing on my mind was getting the war over with so I could settle down and start a family. Then once I became a vampire, it was never an option anymore. That’s why it took me so long to marry you. I put all those dreams out of my head for so long, but now…”

“I know. I mean…I thought I had come to terms with the fact that kids would never be in my future, but with Bonnie…”

“I get it, Elena. Believe me. And it doesn’t make you a bad friend. We can be happy for them and jealous of them at the same time,” Damon assured her. 

“I guess,” Elena sighed. 

“Just think…at least we can spoil this baby rotten,” Damon chuckled. 

“Babies, actually. I’m pretty sure,” Elena told him. “I thought I could hear two separate heartbeats anyway.”

Damon’s eyes widened. “Do they know?” 

“No,” Elena shook her head. “I just barely got Bonnie calmed down about the idea of one baby.”

“Let’s just hope that when she does find out the whole Gemini twin thing doesn’t dawn on her too soon,” Damon sighed. 

“Oh crap!” Elena gasped. “I forgot about that.”

Damon wasn’t surprised. Kai hadn’t brought it up to the group as a whole since their first meeting almost five years ago. He’d been the younger man’s sounding board for years though and they’d bonded over their rough childhoods so it was brought up often with just the two of them. “Let’s hope she did too.”

“Yeah. The last thing she needs is that kind of stress,” Elena sighed. “Which means that someone needs to tell Kai sooner rather than later, not to bring it up again.” 

“I’ll do that tomorrow,” Damon promised. “In the meantime…” he nuzzled her neck. “Just because we can’t procreate, doesn’t mean we can’t try.” 

Elena laughed as she turned to kiss him deeply. “Miracles have been known to happen.”


	17. Chapter 17

The next morning as the four of them gathered in the conference room, Bonnie said, “Once we’re finished here, I want to go home.”

“Home as in…” Damon asked just to confirm what exactly she meant. 

“As in the states. Mystic Falls. The boarding house,” Bonnie explained. 

“Since our last stop is South America, and they were just as curse happy as the Egyptians according to legend, we don’t really want to be anywhere near there with Bonnie pregnant,” Kai added. 

“No, you’re absolutely right,” Damon agreed. 

“Yeah, that baby is the most important thing right now. South America can wait,” Elena nodded. “We should be finished cataloging all this in the next couple weeks. Unless you’d rather just pack it all up and leave now.”

“No, we can finish this,” Bonnie assured them. “There’s nothing dangerous about going through books and assuming I got pregnant because of the artifact, I’m still only three months along so there’s plenty of time.” 

“Okay, it’s settled then. I’ll fly us home as soon as we’re finished with this,” Damon said with a nod. 

Once Damon filled up his memory card and passed the camera over to Elena to upload, he headed out for a few minutes instead of just reading while he waited like he usually did. She gave him a funny look, but didn’t say anything. When he got back about ten minutes later with a large bowl full of fruits that he sat in front of Bonnie, Elena gave him a loving look. “Thank you, Damon,” Bonnie said relieved. “I was just thinking that I was a little hungry.”

“I know. I heard your stomach growling. Though I did consider the possibility that the baby was part demon…” Bonnie smacked his arm as they all laughed. 

“Just be careful with the books,” Kai said with a wince as she bit into a peach and the juice ran down her chin. 

“Right. I’ll just eat over here,” Bonnie chuckled, handing her camera to Elena as she slid her chair away from the table. Most of this stuff was priceless and irreplaceable. And most definitely ancient. The last thing they needed was fruit juice all over it. Not until they got it cataloged anyway. 

Once they were done for the day, Damon dragged Kai out for another guy’s night while Elena stayed in with Bonnie. Damon settled them at the bar, figuring Kai could use a drink. Especially with where this conversation would be going. He poured them both a drink and toasted, “To being a dad.” Kai smiled tightly as he clinked glasses with Damon and then tossed the whole thing back. “Uh-oh. The cold feet hitting?” Damon asked, noticing his demeanor. 

“I don’t know how to be a dad,” Kai said worriedly. “It’s not like I ever had a decent role-model there. What if I screw it all up? What if I end up like him? What if…”

“Easy there, brother,” Damon said amusedly, putting a hand on Kai’s shoulder. “I never had a decent role-model there either, but the way I see it, all you need to do is think about what he would do and then do the opposite.” 

“Like it’ll be that easy,” Kai scoffed. 

“No. It won’t be. But it’s a starting point. And never worry about being him,” Damon assured him. “I know you, Kai. And you don’t have that kind of cruelty in you.”

“I killed my family, Damon,” Kai pointed out incredulously. 

“Yeah. You did. You panicked and snapped and you’ll always regret it. Believe me. I know. But that doesn’t mean that’s who you are. Look at the things I’ve done. Do you hate me for it?” 

“Of course not. Just because you’ve messed up doesn’t make you a bad guy,” Kai told him, glass freezing on the way to his mouth. “Oh.” 

“There you go,” Damon chuckled. “If anything, the mistakes you’ve made and the regret you feel will make you better because you know how bad you can get and you’ll do whatever is necessary to keep from ending up there again.” 

“You really think I can do this?” Kai asked desperately. 

“I know you can,” Damon said seriously. “And you know that Elena and I will help you both any way we can. Even if it’s just beating some sense into you when you’re being stupid.” 

“And I appreciate that more than you know, brother,” Kai said relieved. 

“And I really hate to put this on you when you’re already so stressed, but…well…I guess that’s fatherhood for you,” Damon shrugged apologetically. 

“I know it’s twins,” Kai told him. “Now that I’m looking for it, I can sense them.”

“Did you tell Bonnie?” Damon asked worriedly. 

“That she’s carrying Gemini twins and one of them is destined to die in twenty two years? Do I look stupid?” 

Damon huffed a tense laugh. “Good. That’s basically what I wanted to tell you. Don’t tell her. I mean, she’ll find out about the twins probably sooner rather than later, but unless you’ve talked to her about the Gemini thing since that first day…”

“I haven’t. You’re the only one I’ve talked to about that part of my life,” Kai admitted. 

“Okay, good. Then unless someone brings it up again, it probably won’t dawn on her. Elena had forgotten until I mentioned it, so Bonnie probably has too,” Damon told him. 

“Maybe. I hope so. At least until they’re born. I don’t want her stressing over it,” Kai sighed. 

“If she does figure it out, we’ll deal with it,” Damon promised. 

“There’s one other thing…” Kai said hesitantly. 

“What’s that?”

“One of them is a siphoner,” he said sadly. 

“Okay. Why is that a bad thing?” Damon asked, knowing what he was thinking but wanting to hear him say it. 

“Because the other one is normal. I don’t want them to think…” Kai trailed off, unable to finish the sentence. 

“Just because your family treated you differently from your siblings for it, doesn’t mean you’re going to do the same. You’re a siphoner and Bonnie is a normal witch…though thinking of a better term for it might be a good thing…and it doesn’t come between the two of you. You work well together. You can share power. Your kids will be the same. You and your siblings were a mess because of your parents. Not because you were different. These two will learn to work together from the start.” 

“Yeah. That makes sense. I just can’t help but worry, you know?” 

“I’m pretty sure that’s kind of a requirement for being a dad,” Damon laughed. “That means you’re doing it right.” 

“Let’s just hope I keep doing it right then,” Kai chuckled. 

By the time they got back to the hotel a few hours later, they were both pretty close to smashed and both girls just rolled their eyes at their husbands and took them to bed so they could pass out. Over the next two weeks, they all worked their butts off and even Damon stopped calling for time off. The homesickness was hitting them all hard now that the decision was made to go back. There was also the fact that they had decided to wait until they got home to get books on pregnancy and parenting so they didn’t have to go searching for ones in English. 

Walking in the front door of the boarding house for the first time in almost five years was like a breath of fresh air, even for Kai. He may have only officially stayed there for one night, but he had been unofficially staying there for months watching them before that. It was the first place that he found friends again after so long alone so it held a special place in his heart. This was where his new life of happiness started. 

They went out the next day to stock up on books, Elena hitting the medical section while Damon helped the parents pick out books on pregnancy and parenting. Much like normal, most of their days were spent lost in books, but they were very different kinds of books now. At least for three of them. Damon was somewhat at a loss of what to do. He wasn’t going to be a parent or playing the doctor role, so he mostly just spent his days drinking and wandering around aimlessly. 

When Elena noticed she was ashamed that it had taken her a week to do so, and she quickly dragooned Bonnie and Kai into a discussion on how to help. The first thing Bonnie brought up was making the obvious choice of Damon and Elena as godparents official, which would help, but not too much. He needed a project. Kai was the one to suggest asking Damon to do the nursery. Sure he would probably go overboard, but not in a bad way. That would also help keep the twin secret from Bonnie for a little longer too since Damon would be getting the cribs and bassinettes and everything. Damon quickly agreed to the idea and they picked a room. He immediately banned everyone else from it until he was finished.


	18. Chapter 18

A few nights after they got back, Elena had a restless night and heard someone moving around downstairs. She found Kai rummaging through the thumb drives in the office. “What are you looking for?” she asked. 

“I remembered one of the witches in New Orleans was a healer and specialized in pregnancy and children…”

“Right. Yeah. I forgot about that. Check the third drawer. That’s where the US based thumb drives are,” Elena told him. When he moved to that drawer, she asked, “And is there a reason you’re down here looking for it at three am?” 

“I couldn’t sleep,” Kai said with a shrug. 

“Me either,” Elena admitted. “Why don’t we go have a snack and keep each other company and you can look through that stuff tomorrow when your mind is a little sharper?” They sat up for a couple hours before they both went back to bed and the next morning when Kai got up, he found the correct thumb drive sitting on the desk while Elena made coffee. 

They had been back for almost a month before Bonnie asked Elena, “Do you think you can do the ultrasound thing yet or do you need more time to figure it out? I mean…By my count I should be far enough along now to see the sex of the baby so…”

“Right. Yeah. We can go tomorrow,” Elena told her. She had known that she wouldn’t be able to keep the twins part secret for much longer. As long as she didn’t realize the Gemini part they would be okay. 

All four of them ended up going. Damon wanted to see his godchildren too and no one had any problems at all with that. Bonnie loved being able to share this with her best friends as well as her husband. It took a few minutes for Elena to get the machine going but then they had the babies on the monitor and Elena told Bonnie that it was twins, as if she couldn’t see that for herself. “Twins…” Bonnie breathed out. “You all knew already,” she accused when no one else reacted. 

“We suspected,” Damon half-lied. “We thought we could hear two heartbeats, but it’s hard to separate them enough to be sure. Now we’re sure.” 

“And how did you know?” Bonnie asked Kai. 

“I can sense their magic,” he said and decided to take the same road as Damon. Not lie but not tell the whole truth either. “That’s just as hard to separate though with as jumbled up as they are.” 

“Why didn’t any of you tell me?” Bonnie asked irritated, feeling a mood swing coming on. “You didn’t think I deserved to know? Just because I don’t have magic or super hearing, I get left in the dark about the children growing in MY belly?!” 

“We would have told you if we were sure,” Elena said trying to calm her down. “Just like we’re telling you now that we are sure. We just didn’t want to either freak you out or get your hopes up or both until we were.” 

“I don’t believe you,” Bonnie snapped. “If that’s all it was you would have at least mentioned the possibility. Why would you try to hide this…” she trailed off as a look of horror trailed across her face. “Oh my god…no…no, no, no…”

“Bonnie, please relax,” Kai said gently, taking her hand. “Stress isn’t good for the babies.”

“The babies…Gemini twins…they…no…they can’t…” Bonnie started to panic. They all jumped as the ultrasound machine popped and hissed as it died, and smoke poured from it. That startled Bonnie out of her panic thankfully. “D-did I do that?” 

“I guess that artifact knew what it was talking about after all when it came to getting your magic back,” Damon joked, trying to lighten the mood. 

“Not the time, Damon,” Bonnie warned, narrowing her eyes at him. She turned back to the dead already machine and flung her hand at it and it flew against the wall. A quick barrier spell around them kept them from being hit with any debris. “Well that’s a plus at least. But it doesn’t help the fact that my children will have to merge or die when they grow up.”

“We’ll find a way,” Elena promised. “All this magical knowledge we’ve been getting…we’ll figure it out.” 

“I’m not leaving here until we do,” Bonnie said firmly. “If the rest of you want to go home, I’ll send you when I can, but I’m not leaving until I know my kids are going to be okay.” 

“And none of us would even think about leaving until then either,” Damon assured her, before realizing what he’d said and looked at Elena and Kai who both just nodded at him. “Here we can get to any knowledge in the world. We wouldn’t have that luxury back home. And if you think I’m leaving my godkids behind, you’re nuts.”

Bonnie sighed with relief but looked at Kai, “You’ve been trapped here for so long…I understand if you want to go home…”

“What the hell would I even be going back for without you and our kids?” Kai asked incredulously. “It was bad before because I was alone. I’m not alone anymore. Yes, I would love to go home, but not at the cost of my family. If there is any chance that staying here will help our children, then I’m not going anywhere.”

Bonnie smiled at him as he leaned down to kiss her forehead and then she turned to Elena. “I know that most of the people we know and care about are immortal, but Jeremy…”

“Has Ric to look after him,” Elena said. “And he’s a grown man now. Do I miss him? Yes. Of course I do. But these kids are my family too and they need me a lot more than Jeremy does. I’m staying.” 

That brought Bonnie’s tears on. “Thank you guys so much. All of you. I don’t know what I would do without you.” 

Elena hugged Bonnie from one side while Kai hugged her from the other and Damon just patted her leg. “Now. Why don’t we go find another ultrasound machine and see if we can’t figure out if we need a blue nursery or a pink one.”

“Or half and half,” Damon chuckled. 

Elena was back a few minutes later and they restarted the ultrasound. It took a little while, but they were all relatively certain that they were looking at two boys and as far as their untrained eyes could tell they looked perfectly healthy. Their ears also told them that the heartbeats were strong and normal which was probably a better indicator and the vampires usually focused their hearing on that at least a couple times a day out of habit anyway. 

From there, they all had their projects. Elena was still focused on the medical side of the pregnancy while Damon took the lead on the Gemini twin research. None of them wanted Bonnie to stress too much over that. Now that she had her magic back though, Bonnie as well as Kai studied the healing magic as well as the parenthood and pregnancy books. Bonnie also spent some time every day exercising her magic since it was supposed to be good for the babies too. As long as she didn’t do too much at least. 

The next few months seemed to fly by and before they knew it, Bonnie was in labor. Kai was a nervous wreck and Damon had brought in the whiskey to help calm him. After the first few hours of labor, Elena was convinced that every witch should have a siphoner available when giving birth because if Kai wasn’t here to absorb most of the bursts of magic from Bonnie they would probably be sitting in the middle of a crater right now. 

It was seven hours in when the first baby’s head started to crown and another hour before they were all done and Elena was both exhilarated at what she’d done and glad it was over. Malakai Rudolphus Bennett and Gabriel Remus Bennett were now part of this world, and both of the new parents were already exhausted. Absorbing so much power from Bonnie’s outbursts had worn Kai out just as much as it had Bonnie. 

Damon and Elena gave them a little time with the babies and then offered to take care of them for the rest of the day and night so they could sleep it off and the offer was gladly accepted. Damon and Elena immediately fell in love with their godsons, even when they woke them up every couple hours all night long. When Kai and Bonnie woke up and took over, Damon and Elena both went to take a nap.


	19. Chapter 19

Things went much the same for the next six months as it took all four of them to keep up with the two infants before they finally started sleeping through the night. Unfortunately, that coincided with them becoming mobile and then it was a whole new exercise in patience. It wasn’t until after their first birthday that Damon brought up the idea of finishing their trip. Bonnie just looked at him like he was stupid. “If going into curse laden ancient temples was dangerous when I was pregnant its five times more so with two toddlers,” she pointed out. 

“No, I’m not talking about taking them inside obviously,” Damon rolled his eyes. “They’ll just be along for the trip. I mean, we’ll need Kai to help siphon any curses and spells, but you can hang back at a safe distance with the kids and if you need some help Elena or I could stay with you.”

“I don’t know,” Bonnie said nervously. 

“I would definitely feel better if one of us stayed back with her and the kids,” Elena said. “At least when we’re in the rain forest. But yeah, I think we could do it.”

“They’re right, Bon,” Kai chimed in. “What if something we find there could help them? Putting it off while you were pregnant and they were babies was the right thing, but we have to get back out there sometime.” 

Bonnie sighed heavily. “Yeah. You’re right,” she admitted. “Let’s take a couple weeks to prepare this time though. We can’t just pick up and leave out of the blue with the kids.” 

“That makes sense,” Damon agreed. “We’ll go in two weeks then.”

They started more in central America and worked their way down. There was a lot to cover. For a lot of it they were able to stay in cities and Bonnie was okay taking care of the kids alone while they raided the caches during those times. For the times where they were camping in the wilderness, Damon and Elena took turns staying with them. Even though Bonnie had her magic back now, having someone with super speed and super strength on hand could definitely come in handy and it did more than once. 

One day in particular while they were camping in the Amazon, the kids were toddling around the campsite while Bonnie and Elena watched them as they chatted when there was a flash of movement from the brush beside them. Bonnie didn’t even see Elena move before she was rolling across the ground with a young jaguar clutched in her arms. Bonnie threw up a quick barrier spell around the kids as she rushed over to them. 

Elena shifted her grip on the jaguar as she had an idea and moved so that she could look in it’s eyes. She knew that Damon had done this with ravens before and he had told her how it worked, but she’d never tried it herself. She pulled her compulsion power to the surface and when she felt the mind link settle in, she let go of the jaguar and sat back, looking at it curiously. When it came over to rub against her she knew it was all good and she scratched her behind the ears before getting up and going back over to Bonnie and the kids. “Artemis, this is family. We protect them. Understand?” Artemis just circled them protectively, as though looking for threats. “You can drop the barrier, Bonnie,” Elena told told her. 

Only the fact that Bonnie trusted Elena with her life had her doing so and her heart nearly stopped when the jaguar approached the babies, but she just sniffed them up and down before doing the same with Bonnie as both the kids cried, “Kitty!” and started climbing on her. 

Elena laughed and pulled them both off. “We have to be nice to the kitty, kiddos. If you climb on her like that it could hurt her and we don’t want that do we?” 

“No hurt kitty,” little Kai shook his head profusely. 

“Love kitty,” Gabe agreed. 

When Kai and Damon got back a little later, they were met with a rather ferocious beast guarding the campsite, but before either of them could dispatch it, Elena was there. “It’s okay Artemis. They’re family too. We protect them too.” 

Artemis went up to both of them and sniffed them up and down before going to lay back down by the fire. “Really, Elena?” Damon asked amusedly. 

“What? I always wanted a cat,” she shrugged. 

Everyone laughed as Kai shook his head. “If ever there were a doubt that you two were perfect for each other…” Kai said with a roll of his eyes. 

“Well now I have to go find a super cool pet,” Damon pouted playfully. 

“Like we need another dangerous beast around,” Bonnie sighed in resignation. 

It took a few days for Damon to spot the one he wanted when he saw a harpy eagle flying around overhead. “That’s it. That’s the one I want,” he grinned. “Harpy eagles are almost as cool as ravens.”

“I admit, it could come in handy,” Bonnie said. She’d grown rather attached to Artemis over the last few days and realized how nice it was to have her around. She could help corral the kids in the area and keep them safe and the kids loved her to death. She had almost died laughing the day one of the kids slipped away and Artemis brought him back before she even had a chance to panic. She had bitten through the back of his pants and shirt, without even leaving a scratch on his skin and was carrying him and dropped him at her feet. Gabe had jumped to his feet and started crying, ‘again!’. Needless to say, she was warming up to the idea of animal protectors and having one in the air would definitely be helpful. 

“I’ll be back,” Damon said, zipping off after it. He followed its path through the sky just waiting for it to drop down so he could grab it and soon after he had a new companion too. When he got back to the campsite with the eagle on his arm, Elena just laughed at his smug look. “So I’m thinking of naming the harpy Elena. What do you think?” 

Elena chucked a rock at him and hit him in the gut as everyone, including her laughed. Damon doubled over at the hit and the eagle flapped its wings to right itself before it fell, slapping Damon in the head repeatedly in the process which then had them all rolling on the ground. Thankfully, Elena had the presence of mind to send a mental message to Artemis not to hurt the eagle attacking one of her family and that the eagle was family now too. 

“I was kidding,” Damon laughed as he righted himself and his new pet. “It’s a boy anyway. Going with the theme, I’ll name him Ares.” 

No matter which vampire was staying at the campsite, both animals did and having them available to corral the kids meant that they had a little more ability to go through the treasures that were being found. They had been hiking through the rain forest for almost a month when Damon spotted something interesting. “Hey Bon-bon. Take a look at this. What do you see?” 

He handed her the camera, zoomed in on one part of the carvings on the wall. “I don’t really know Incan obviously, but that looks a lot like what I would imagine a symbol for vampire to be like…is that even possible?” 

“Well vampires have been around since about one thousand AD and the Incan civilization was active between twelve hundred and fifteen hundred, so yeah, it’s definitely possible, but scroll over. It gets better,” Damon said with a grin.

Bonnie did so curiously, taking some time to figure out the strange symbols and she scrolled a few more times before she figured out what they were saying and she dropped the camera in shock. “This can’t be real…” she breathed out. 

“We need to get back in that temple,” Damon said excitedly. 

“I assume Kai’s already cleared it of any dangerous magic?” Bonnie asked and Damon nodded. “Then we’re all going. I have to see this for myself.” As long as it was safe for the kids, there was no way she was missing this. Trying to decipher it from the symbols on the small camera screen left too much room for misinterpretation. 

“We’ll go tomorrow,” Damon promised. “Don’t say anything to Elena yet though. I don’t want to get her hopes up in case we’re wrong or there’s something out of context.”

“I won’t,” Bonnie promised. There was no way she was setting her best friend up for that kind of letdown if it wasn’t real. It was bad enough that Damon would clearly be devastated.


	20. Chapter 20

As soon as Kai and Elena got back, Damon told them, “We’re going back to the temple we were at a few days ago and we’re all going this time.”

“Why? Is there something there that can help the kids?” Elena asked hopefully. 

“No, there’s something else. Something big,” Damon told her. 

“What?” Kai asked curiously. 

“I don’t want to say until we can confirm. You know how hard it is to make things out clearly on the camera screen,” Damon said. They mostly just went in, took pictures of the walls, collected anything that could be carried and headed back to go through and record it later. This was too big to trust to anything but in person inspection though. 

“Okay, if you say so,” Elena huffed. She hated being left in the dark, but it must be huge for Damon to be acting like this, so she would wait it out. 

The next morning, Damon was up before the sun and chomping at the bit to leave immediately, which just got Elena and Kai even more curious. The non-vampires in the group ate breakfast quickly and Damon and Elena carried the kids, strapped into their backpack harnesses. With their vampire strength it was easier for them to do so. Artemis trotted along beside them and Ares flew overhead as the group made their way back to the old previously hidden temple. 

It took about two hours before they got there and once they were inside, the kids were set down and allowed to play while the adults, kept half an eye on them, mostly trusting the animals to keep them in line, and paid most of their attention to the wall once Damon found the right one. They were all getting pretty good at figuring out the pictographs after so long, so it didn’t take more than an hour to confirm the story. At least as it was written. That didn’t mean the claims were true. 

“Let me make sure I’m understanding this as the rest of you are. This sect worshipped a vampire couple that set themselves up as gods and these vampires wanted so badly to have children that they tasked the witches of the region to make it possible. They were killed before the witches finished but they believed they would return so they finished the task and left two doses of the elixir hidden away for when their gods returned. Is that what you got?” Elena asked in shock. 

“Yep. That’s pretty much the way I read it too,” Damon said with a grin. 

“You were right. This is huge,” Kai agreed with wide-eyes. 

“Are you two gonna take it if we can find it?” Bonnie asked. 

“Hell yeah,” Damon said without missing a beat as Elena nodded profusely. The chance to have a baby of their own…there was no way they were passing up on that chance. 

“So how do we find it?” Kai asked. 

Damon considered the matter for a moment. If they had wanted to make sure that their gods could find it but no one else could… “Elena, help me move this altar?” Damon asked. It took both of them, even with their strength and sure enough behind the altar there was a map. 

Bonnie grabbed the camera and took the best picture she could of it even as Elena sat down and pulled out her journal to copy it painstakingly on a blank page. By the time they got back to the campsite, dark was settling over the jungle. Damon and Elena wanted nothing more than to set out after the elixir at first light, but they needed to leave to restock first. They were running out of blood, food, and diapers. Instead, Bonnie and Kai waited at the campsite, using both the picture and drawing of the map to plan their route while the vampires, as usual due to their speed, went on the restocking trip. 

It took two days at vampire speed to get out of the jungle back to the RV and then another few hours to drive into town. They could have run the rest of the way faster, but after two days of running they desperately needed the break. Half the day was spent restocking and then they drove the RV back as far as they could get it into the rainforest just as the sun set. They slept in the RV before loading up as much as they could carry in as many bags as they could carry and started their run back. 

By the time Damon and Elena returned, Bonnie and Kai had the route planned and at least part of it scouted so they would be ready to leave the next morning. It would take two days to get there, so they were moving the entire camp. Thankfully, the cure was in the direction they were already heading so they didn’t have to get off track at all, even if they were going out of order now. It was dark by the time they arrived and they had to wait another day to get into the tomb. 

They had decided to camp near the front of the tomb so both Damon and Elena could go. Both animals were able to mentally call their masters for help if anything happened and were set to watch and protect. Since nothing existed here but other animals and both of them were pretty much near the top of the food chain, no one was particularly worried. Especially since Bonnie was perfectly capable of throwing out some battle magic if needed too. They would still rather be safe than sorry. 

At the door there was a device that clearly wanted blood, so Kai placed his hand in the slot. Only the quick reflexes of both Damon and Elena kept him from being eviscerated by two stone spikes that shot towards him. “If this was set up for their gods…vampires…maybe it wants vampire blood. To prove that they are who they say they are,” Elena suggested. 

“That makes sense. It would also explain why the spikes are made of stone. It won’t hurt a vampire, but anyone else that comes looking would be killed,” Damon agreed. 

Kai shrugged and took a step back and Damon stuck his hand in the slot. “Now we just have to hope that it doesn’t want the blood from those specific vampires,” he said just as there was a click and the door opened. “Guess not.”

“I doubt the ancient Incans got as far as specific DNA strands,” Elena chuckled as she stepped inside, only to stop in her tracks. When Damon and Kai bumped into her back, Damon had to grab her to keep her from falling. “Wow, they really are going all out to make sure no one else gets their hands on this.” 

“I’ll say,” Damon chuckled as they looked down at pit filled with more stone spikes and no way across for anyone without the ability to jump as far as a vampire. “I’ll take Kai. You go,” Damon told her. He was stronger and faster since he was older so it only made sense that he would carry the dead weight. 

“Maybe he should go wait outside,” Elena suggested. “They clearly only wanted vampires to get in so I doubt there’s any curses or anything that could hurt us.”

“Maybe not, but there’s a good chance we’ll need a translation spell at some point or something else similar,” Damon pointed out. 

“Yeah, no way am I leaving you two in here alone,” Kai said firmly. Bonnie would flay him alive if he let them get hurt and he fully trusted them to keep him safe. 

“Okay. If you’re sure. If it gets more dangerous though…” Elena said. 

“We’ll get him out,” Damon promised. No way was he going to let Kai die either. Damon waited for Elena to make the jump and clear the area before he picked Kai up and jumped himself. Carrying the extra weight overbalanced him and they both tumbled to the floor, but aside from a few scrapes on Kai they were both unhurt and they moved on. The next obstacle looked like it was straight out of Indiana Jones or something as an entire wall of spikes kept shooting across and retracting. Vampire speed was the only way to get past. Once again, Damon was stuck carrying Kai as they took turns blurring their way through and thankfully that was as far as they had to go. 

They found a stone pedestal at the center that held two wooden vials and the first thing Damon did was pick them up to make sure that they were intact and he was glad to find that they were and the liquid was still inside them. Kai had moved over to grab the scroll that was between them and did a translation spell. “Okay, it looks like this is the formula if they ever wanted to make more, but I don’t think it’s gonna do us any good.”

“Why not?” Elena asked curiously, looking at the vial Damon had handed her like it was made of pure gold.

“Because I’m almost certain that at least these two animals are extinct, and I wouldn’t be surprised if half the other things on this list of ingredients are too.”


	21. Chapter 21

“So this is a one time deal then?” Damon asked. If it was he would still consider himself beyond lucky for the opportunity, but it didn’t stop him wishing for more.

“Not exactly,” Kai continued reading. “Supposedly it will last forever. It will become a part of your physiology. We just won’t be able to make more for anyone else. Oh and it also requires a minor ritual for the pregnancy to take place. You have to draw a couple symbols on each other’s bodies with your blood.” 

“Okay, so just to confirm…once we take this, we’ll always be able to have kids whenever we want but only if we draw those symbols first?” Elena asked. 

“According to this, yes,” Kai said. “But I really don’t think it’s such a good idea to take anything until we find some way to test it and make sure it’s not poison or gone bad over time or something like that,” Kai pointed out. 

“Unless it has vervain or werewolf venom in it, nothing can hurt us,” Damon pointed out. He wasn’t going to take the risk of this getting lost or broken or spilled or anything else that would prevent him from taking it. He pulled the cork out at the same time Elena did and he raised the vial in the air. “Bottoms up,” he smirked as they drank it at the same time and then both doubled over coughing. 

“Oh god…that’s horrible,” Elena groaned. 

“You’re telling me. No wonder they made it a one-time use. No one would ever drink it a second time,” Damon gagged. 

“But you’re both okay? You’re not dying or anything?” Kai asked both worried and amused.

“I’m sure my taste buds are committing suicide right now, but otherwise yeah. I’m fine,” Damon told him. 

“Same here. On both counts. Holy crap,” Elena said smacking her lips and trying to get the taste out of her mouth. 

“Here. Maybe this will wash it down,” Damon pulled a blood bag out of his pack and handed it to her. 

“God, I hope so,” Elena took it and took a long drink, scrunching up her nose before handing it back to Damon. “Not much but it does help.” 

Damon finished it off and came to the same conclusion before turning to Kai. “You got pictures of that scroll?” Kai nodded and handed it to Damon. “Good. Anything else here you want to grab?” 

“Nope. There’s nothing else here at all,” Kai told them. The walls were bare, and he couldn’t sense any magic at all other than the translation spell he’d done on the scroll. 

“Then let’s get out of here,” Elena suggested and they made their way back the way they came. 

Once they were outside, Bonnie rushed up, a kid on each hip. “How did it go? Did you find it?” she asked hopefully. 

“Found it and took it,” Damon grinned. 

“Are you sure that was wise?” Bonnie raised an eyebrow at them. “I mean, even if it didn’t end up being poison or something, there’s still the fact that we’re in the middle of the jungle and are going to be here for a while longer. Unless you’re planning on staying at the campsite with me all the time,” Bonnie asked Elena. 

“Oh no. I won’t get pregnant right away. There’s some ritual thingy we have to do first but the elixir is permanent.” 

“Since it’s not immediate, I figured it would be better to take it while it was in hand rather than risk something happening to it,” Damon pointed out. 

“I guess that makes sense…but you’re sure it’s not going to hurt you?” Bonnie asked worriedly. 

“About ninety five percent sure,” Damon shrugged. “But it’s worth the risk.” 

“Agreed,” Elena nodded. “There’s nothing in it that is known to hurt vampires, so we should be fine.” 

“We’ll keep an eye on them for a few days,” Kai promised as he took one of the kids from Bonnie and bounced him happily. 

It was another three months before they finished up their quest for knowledge and headed home. Little Kai and Gabe had just turned two, having celebrated their birthday in the middle of the jungle. Artemis and Ares were more than dubious about the airplane and were more than a little on edge the entire flight, but seemed to love Virginia once they arrived. 

Damon and Elena had spent quite a bit of time studying the ritual they had to do over the last few months and both had it memorized now and their first night home they wasted no time in doing it. According to the scroll, the elixir had a fertility component so it would only take once. If it worked at all, neither of them wanted to say. The idea of coming so far and getting so close only for it to fail would gut them, so they preferred not to think about the possibility until or unless they had to. 

The next few weeks they were very on edge and tried to bury themselves in work. Since they had spent the last six months camping in the wilderness without electricity, none of what they’d found had been catalogued, though pictures had been taken of what they couldn’t carry with them, so they had a lot of work to do. Since it was combined with childcare, they were only halfway finished six weeks later when Damon heard it. He gasped and reached out and grabbed Elena’s arm. “Elena, listen,” he breathed out. 

Elena looked at him curiously and focused her hearing and sucked in a sharp breath when she heard it. “A heartbeat…it’s slow, but it’s a vampire so that makes sense, but…it’s there. A heartbeat. A baby…it worked,” Elena burst into happy tears as she threw her arms around her husband. “It worked. I can’t believe it worked.”

Damon stood up and lifted her into the air, swinging her around and laughing happily. “God, I love you, Elena,” he breathed out, pulling her into a searing kiss as he continued to spin her, slowly lowering her to the floor. “This is…I can’t…” He kissed her again in lieu of words before grabbing her hand and dragging her from the room. “Come on,” he said as he pulled her out the door. “Kai! Bon!” he yelled as they got outside, looking for where they and the kids were. 

“What? What’s wrong?” Bonnie asked as they ran up. 

“It worked,” Elena cried almost tackling Bonnie in a hug. 

“What worked?” Kai asked confused as Damon grabbed him in a crushing hug too which he amusedly returned. 

“Guess who’s joining the dad club,” Damon grinned. 

Kai pulled away to look at him in surprise. “What? No way? It seriously worked? That’s amazing!” he said pulling his ecstatic pseudo-brother into another hug. He hadn’t really expected it too. One of those too good to be true things. 

Bonnie bounced with Elena as she heard what they were talking about. “Oh my god…I’m so happy for you!” 

They took a break for a few days from the work as they just reveled in the news and they all spent time together as a family before they got back into their normal schedule where each couple worked half the day and then spent half the day with the kids and the evenings all together. It was a few weeks later before Elena was the first to catch yet another heartbeat. “Bonnie?” she asked with wide eyes. “You know you’re pregnant again right?” 

“Really?” Bonnie grinned. “We’ve been trying since you did your thing. We wanted our kids to grow up together…”

“That’s perfect,” Elena grinned back. 

“There’s…only one right?” Bonnie couldn’t help but ask. That had been her greatest fear, but the chances of getting twins again was slim. It had taken Kai’s parents five more tries before they’d gotten another set of twins. 

“As far as I can tell, yeah. It’s still faint so I can’t be positive, but I’m pretty sure there’s just one,” Elena assured her. 

“Good,” she said relieved, grin spreading back on her face before they went to give Kai the news. The guys were in the lounge having a few drinks as they did a couple times a week. Kai reacted much as he had the last time, but without the sudden crippling fear that hit the next day. He was ecstatic and hoping for a girl this time. Damon and Elena didn’t care. The fact that they were having a baby at all was a miracle as far as they were concerned. 

It was about another week before Kai was able to sense his baby’s magic and agreed with Elena that there was probably only one, but none of them were sure until about a month later when they were stronger. When Elena pointed out that she couldn’t deliver her own baby, Damon grinned and said, “That’s why I started reading up as soon as we did the ritual.” Bonnie would be far too pregnant or recovering from birth herself and Kai was too worried he would faint, so that left Damon and he was more than happy to deliver his own child, and he would end up having to deliver Bonnie’s too most likely.


	22. Chapter 22

Now that everything was cataloged, they went out and got three more computers, realizing that since everything was digital, they couldn’t all work at the same time now and they set them up around the center table in the library where there was more room. They quickly divided up the work. Damon was the best with French so he took all the New Orleans research as well as most of the European aside from the Viking part which Elena took along with the rest of the US, having discovered a knack for the runic language. She was far from fluent, but she could figure it out. Kai took the Egyptian and Asian resources since the translation spell had done most of the work on the latter and Bonnie covered South America, finding their pictographs almost instinctual to read, and from there it was all about finding something that could help prevent the twin merge. 

Both Bonnie and Elena were doted on by their men, much to their irritation and Little Kai and Gabe loved sitting with them and feeling the babies kick once they could feel it. Even Artemis and Ares were being more overprotective than usual and wouldn’t leave either of the sides whenever they stepped out of the house. Artemis mostly lived inside, but Ares rarely came in the window they left open for him. He much preferred the outdoors. Artemis even shared the bed with Damon and Elena and more than once Damon muttered about how glad he was that he had an extra-sized bed. That didn’t stop him from waking up with a jaguar half draped across him most mornings though. 

Once they were far enough along, they all went to the hospital for ultrasounds for both of them and learned that Damon and Elena were having a boy while Kai would get his little girl. Despite having been able to hear the slow heartbeat for months, it hadn’t been real for Damon until he actually saw the baby on the screen and his eyes filled with tears that he blinked away before they could fall. He finally had everything he wanted. A wife, a child, an entire extended family with godchildren that called him ‘Uncle Damon’. He was more blessed than he could ever have imagined and he’d only had to die to get here. It may not be eternal peace, but it was even better. 

The only thing that could make it perfect was finding a solution for the twins and going home. As much as he loved Kai, he missed his real brother. And his other pseudo brother. And his best friend, Liz who, like Jeremy, didn’t have forever like the rest of them. Hell, he even missed vampire barbie. That didn’t mean that he wasn’t happy here though. He had never been so happy in his life and he was probably being beyond greedy for even wishing for more, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted to share his joy with the rest of his family too. And someday he would be able to. He still agreed that fixing the twins was the first priority though. 

When the time came, Bonnie went into labor first, and they all desperately hoped that they wouldn’t end up in labor at the same time. Otherwise Kai would have to suck it up and step up to the plate. Just in case, Damon made the decision that he was definitely delivering Bonnie’s baby and Elena was going to stay in bed and not do anything that might trigger labor. Elena only agreed when they agreed that staying in bed meant staying in Bonnie’s bed next to her. She wasn’t missing the birth of her goddaughter for anything. 

Damon managed the delivery without any problems and let out a sigh of relief when it was done and both Bonnie and the newly dubbed Carolina Rose Bennett were perfectly healthy. Like with the twins, their kids, and Kai were taking the Bennett name. Partially to make sure that the Bennett line continued uninterrupted and partially because Kai wanted nothing more than to distance himself from his past and his family. 

Elena thankfully waited another two days to go into labor herself. It was a much more difficult process, maybe because she was a vampire or maybe just the luck of the draw. Their quick healing was a blessing because otherwise, without a doctor, neither of them would have made it. Elena had to remind Damon about the healing more than once when he approached the edge of panic, but when it was all said and done and Damon held his son in his arms, he wouldn’t have traded a second of it for anything. 

Damon went and sat next to Elena on the bed and the three of them cuddled for a long moment before Elena looked up at Kai and Bonnie who were watching them happily, having stayed for moral support through the birth just as Damon and Elena had for both of theirs. “Guys, meet Damian Jeremy Salvatore.” 

“That’s a perfect name,” Bonnie smiled brightly, Carolina wrapped in her arms fast asleep. Both of them had managed to go into labor overnight while the twins were sleeping, which meant they could all be there for it, even though they were more than a little tired the next day. Like Damon and Elena had for them both times, Bonnie and Kai took Damian for a while so they could rest. 

Most of the baby furniture from the twins were used for these two as well, though they had separate nurseries now. Not that Damian slept in the nursery for a while, having a bassinette in Damon and Elena’s room until he was six months old when he switched to the crib in the nursery, which also coincided with him sleeping through the night. He didn’t wake up nearly as often as human babies since he was only drinking blood and despised the baby formula. He only woke up once in the middle of the night to eat until even that dropped off at six months. 

The animals quickly took to the new babies and once Damian moved to his crib Artemis often climbed in with him and wrapped around him as he slept. Both Damon and Elena were glad of that. For one thing, Artemis could and would get them if anything happened and for two, they got their bed to themselves again. Granted Elena could have used the mind link to make her sleep elsewhere at any time, but she tried not to use it for things like that if she could help it. Artemis was a member of the family. A beloved pet. Not a puppet. 

Things soon settled into a new routine with the extra two kids in the house, not that it changed a lot from the old one since they still rotated the care of the children and time went on as they continued searching for a solution to the twin merge issue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The sequel to this one will be coming tomorrow so no I'm not just going to leave you here for long lol.


End file.
